Welcome to this ongoing message thread. Once again, the previous part of this ongoing series, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 12, is becoming rather long and slow to load, so we are continuing the series here.

The same guidelines apply here. Anything remotely related to zinnias is fine and, as a courtesy to readers with smaller monitors, try to keep the pictures posted no wider than 986 pixels.

This picture is 986 pixels wide, and it shows one of my current recombinant hybrid zinnias that is oddly colored, with both bicolor and scabiosa flowered characteristics.

Its coloration could be described as tan and dusty rose. Its petal tips match the color of some of the wood chips in the surrounding mulch. I almost decided to pull it up, but didn't. In previous years I have seen a few zinnias that could be described as brown or tan and they weren't really attractive either. But they are unusual, and I keep them on that basis. I'm not really trying to breed a strain of brown or tan zinnias, and yet I have a fascination for zinnias with odd colors. I guess that green zinnias also fall in that category. I continue to cross odd colors with each other and other colors, just to get new zinnia colors. I think that greens crossed with whites or yellows could produce good new shades.

ZM

for marketing purposes.. how about peach and pomegranate ...

ken

Yes, marketing is the key. Peach and pomegranate it is. Or maybe mocha and coffee. Tan and brown aren't "in" colors. I saved some seeds from that "pomegranate & mocha" zinnia today. I think most of them were selfs, so it will be interesting to see what comes of that.

I have been selecting for "spider flowered" zinnias, with long narrow petals. I'm not there yet, but have been making some incremental progress, like this one that bloomed this Fall.

I want the petals to be lots longer and thinner yet. And bicolored or tricolored spiders would be nice, too. One goal would be a strain of dark colored spiders with white, yellow, or light pink tips. (grin) And mocha tips, too. I mainly cross spiders with other near spiders, to get a variety of colors while still trying to "zero in on" the spider flowerform.

ZM

First, I wanted to give a reference to Cameron that may be useful, and that is this link to a Cornell University listing of sites that mention deer-resistant plants:

Cornell Gardening Resources-Deer Defenses

I guess as far as color goes in zinnias--"Different strokes for different folks".... I grew the Queen Red Lime
zinnias for the first time this year, and they are a dusky green rose that is safe to say, unusual--not my cup of tea for sure! But I was amazed at visitors to the garden who expressed their excitement over the flowers. I noticed in farmer's markets that people who sell cut flowers have included them in their offerings. After growing green zinnias here for several years, I actually got some zinnias with the same color through random hybrization.

I don't know how many of you have tried the new Microsoft search engine (bing.com), but I just did! Of course, I wanted to look at zinnia images. I saw a really nice flower (well, pretty much the same form as my "Extreme Roll," different color) at the University of Florida website:

University of Florida-Greenhouse Specialty Crops

Now what do you think of that? Gorgeous example! Someone is doing some zinnia breeding.....

If you go to bing.com, (this is not about zinnias, but interesting), try the "maps" option, then search your address, and choose the bird's eye view. It was quite nice for our area..

JG

That yellow Extreme Roll at the University of Florida is impressive. Either they have two of them, or there are two pictures of the same zinnia. I'm not sure they are breeding them, though, since most, if not all, of their zinnia pictures seem to represent Benary's Giants. The second picture from the left seems to be an orange Benary's Giant and, it too, has a rather rolled petal form, reminiscent of your "Loopy". Loopy was a beauty. I suspect these Florida pictures are just selections from their "greenhouse grown" Benary's Giants. I certainly hope they are breeding zinnias but, in this case, my hopes aren't too high.

I am, however, encouraged that Benary's Giants can produce some really pretty flowerforms, and I intend to grow a significant number of them to expand my gene pool. I recently planted several White Benary's Giants.

So far, by using plant growth regulators, I have been able to keep my indoor zinnias from "running away from me." I think the PGRs may be making the flower sizes smaller, though.

I think greenish zinnias in a spider flower form would be unusual, and I hope to get something like that by next Spring. My "fourth generation" indoor zinnias are starting to come into bloom now, and this was one of the first to bloom:

It was planted September 22nd as a petal seed from the breeder designated "C46" and C46 was pictured back in Part 11 on Wed, Jun 24, 09 at 10:56 and again on Thu, Jul 16, 09 at 0:55. This pictured flower bloomed in about 5 weeks from the date of planting, which is pretty fast. There is not too much similarity to the mother, except for the scabiosa influence. I'm saving it for the present time, but intend to be rather selective in what I keep indoors, due to my limited growing space. I have a bunch more "fourth generation" indoor zinnias coming into bloom in the next few days. By really pushing it with zinnias both indoors and outdoors, it might be possible to get five generations of zinnias in a twelve month period. I do enjoy zinnia gardening, both outdoors and indoors.

ZM

I really like the offspring of the scabious zinnia you are showing here. In fact, I think I like it better than the parent! It's got a really nice golden color and the curly central petals are interesting.

I'm glad you are growing the zinnias indoors--it assures all the rest of us that we will be seeing new zinnia photos throughout the winter! Looking forward to your Persian Carpet crosses, too! I believe I had an elegans-haageana hybrid this summer, and I just decided to self it rather than backcross it to another haageana, just to see if I can get viable offspring next summer.

A green cactus flower would be interesting--don't think I've ever seen one here or anywhere else. Speaking of white Benary zinnias, I grew the White Wedding zinnias this summer. They were't so tall as the typical Benaries, but the flower form was identical. I always grow a quarter oz. or more of mixed color Benary zinnias. They are a handsome flower, and I'm sure contribute a pretty strong genetic contribution to my randomly hybridized zinnias every year.

I was curious about that yellow zinnia at U. of Fla., so e-mailed the research center a question about whether they had more like it, or if seeds were available. I'm hoping they take the time to answer! It looks like they were definitely growing a lot of Benary zinnias--probably with a focus on optimizing conditions for growing flowers for cutting.

JG

I'm glad you like that last zinnia. I sort of do, too. I'm curious to see how many of those curled central petals will form. I just planted a few White Weddings a couple of days ago. My goals are for taller plants than they have, but hopefully they can contribute bushiness of the plant, as well as a good white color. Bushy plants are one of the desirable traits of the commercial scabiosa flowered strains.

I also planted a few Swizzles, for branchiness and two-tones in crosses. Of course, they are F1s, so I will get some weirdness in their crosses, and maybe a few of those apetalous females will show up. I might do some experiments with them. I wonder if other flowers, like marigolds for example, have apetalous forms.

I would be very curious to know how U of Fla responds to your email, or if they respond. In the past I have had a poor track record getting responses to unsolicited emails. I wonder if U of Fla even realize how unusual that yellow quilled zinnia is. It would be great if we could get some help from an institution like that.

I have several young Persian Carpet seedlings. I plan to plaster the better ones with pollen when they bloom.

I'm still reading in the subject area of tissue culture and micropropagation, with the idea of applying some of those techniques to my zinnias. I'll probably buy one of Dr. Carol Stiff's kitchen culture kits. More later.

ZM

One thing I've noticed about the Swizzles is that the flowers seem to last a very long time. So with the branching, you can have quite a few flowers in different stages of maturity on the same plant. For me, Swizzles don't yield a whole lot of seed. Maybe the lack of successful fertilization allows the flowers to last longer.
And, I've noticed that my limited crosses of Swizzles with the taller zinnias result in plants of short or intermediate height.

I don't get apetalous flowers often--probably one or two a year. Next time I get one, I should save the seeds from it, and try to get a strain that would consistently give rise to a good number of apetalous plants-- best to continually backcross to a known strain for that. Guess they would be good for certain crosses. You really have to keep track of your lines, though. I always get an apetalous flower showing up within the flowers coming from random crosses, so I have no idea what sort of genes it might contribute to its offspring. You would have better luck to get one of those apetalous blooms from a known strain.

I do think an interesting experiment would be compare offspring arising from the ray vs. the dics flowers of a zinnia. You've said earlier that you can see some correspondence between seed shape and leaf shape, which may have some relation to where on the flower the seed originated. Anyway, I think I will be able to do that with my Extreme Roll seeds and see if there is any relation of seed location on the flower to phenotype. Again, it may very well be a result of self- vs. less self- pollination.

I hope the U. of Fla. will respond to my note, but wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. If my curiosity gets the best of me sometime, I may give them a call...

I hope you do get a micropropagation kit. I expect you may get some good results! The farthest along I've thought about indoor growth of zinnias lately is to perhaps ask one of the local nurserymen in the area for some space in his greenhouse to start some flats in the winter. That way, if I were to be gone for a week or more, my plants wouldn't suffer too much!

I hope you get some of those Persian Carpets with the near-black and white color patterns! You will eventually, but soon, I hope, so we can see how offspring of those turn out for you!

JG

"I do think an interesting experiment would be to compare offspring arising from the ray vs. the disc flowers of a zinnia."

I have been keeping track of petal seeds and floret seeds for scabiosa based zinnias. This picture shows a petal based plant:

The pictured plant is in a 3-inch square pot, about ready for repotting in a 5-inch pot like those behind it. A couple of factors have made my fourth generation zinnias more compact and bushy. Apparently our water supply is deficient in boron, and a boron deficiency caused the initial growing tips of many of my young fourth generation zinnias to die. That happened to the zinnia above. That had the somewhat fortuitous effect of chemically pinching the plants. I have since supplemented the boron in my nutrients with diluted boric acid to help offset the boron deficiency. I don't want my zinnias to suffer nutrient deficiencies, even if there was a desirable side effect.

I am also making more extensive use of plant growth regulators to prevent my zinnia plants from growing too tall. This Summer, if an indoor zinnia grew too tall, I simply moved it outside. That option won't be open this Winter. The Topflor that I use suppresses natural gibberellin production.

The petal seeds are more likely to be crossed with some other zinnia, while the floret seeds are more likely to be selfed. Beyond that, I haven't yet noticed any differences between zinnia plants from petal seeds and those from floret seeds. That's not to say that such differences don't exist, and I or someone else may very well notice them in the future.

ZM

"I don't get apetalous flowers often--probably one or two a year. Next time I get one, I should save the seeds from it, and try to get a strain that would consistently give rise to a good number of apetalous plants-- best to continually backcross to a known strain for that."

I think that most commercial F1 hybrid zinnias have a male sterile apetalous female parent. Apparently the genetics are such that there isn't a pure 100% apetalous strain, but a significant fraction of them are apetalous, so the seed producer can hire people to chop out the non-apetalous specimens, leaving a commercial row of male sterile apetalous plants which can be next to a row of male pollen donors for bee pollination. Since we both will be growing offspring from F1 hybrids, I expect that we both will see one or more apetalous specimens next year.

Between the boron problem and my use of PGRs, a lot of my fourth generation zinnias are compact, like this specimen in a 5-inch pot:

None of these compact fourth generation zinnias has a compact parent, even though they look like they must have. I'm still learning by trial and error about using Topflor and other PGRs. One thing I didn't take into account was that the re-used growth medium that I use apparently contains some residual PGR that affects the seedlings that I repot into it. Most of my fourth generation zinnias are pretty well behaved as far as height is concerned.

ZM

This is a closeup of the bloom on that little plant above.

It seems to have strong scabiosa influence, as well as a multicolored effect from Whirligig heritage. Hybrids of hybrids are interesting because they can recombine so many different traits. And you don't feel the pressure to cross-pollinate them, because their self-pollinated seeds will give you a variety of surprises just by continuing to recombine their heterozygous genes.

ZM

I believe I remember that the apetalous flowers are the result of a number of particular alleles (hybrid) present that would make it nearly impossible to get all apetalous flowers in any one planting. But keeping the seeds of some of these probably increases the chances of getting some apetalous offspring in the next generation.

That last flower looks like a flame of sorts--with the mixed yellows, reds, and oranges. Pretty colors! And, that is a really compact plant you have there! I wonder what the potency of the hormone solution that you use is over time? I know some forms easily break down, others not so readily.

Scabious plants for me are hardly ever so bushy as the other
kinds of zinnias. When I grow them in rows in my large garden, I can always tell from a distance which are the scabious because they have less branching and leaves. It would be nice to get a bushy form.

JG

" I believe I remember that the apetalous flowers are the result of a number of particular alleles (hybrid) present that would make it nearly impossible to get all apetalous flowers in any one planting. But keeping the seeds of some of these probably increases the chances of getting some apetalous offspring in the next generation. "

I agree. It will be interesting to save seeds from any apetalous specimens that might appear next year, to see what results from them. Presumably there are several different apetalous strains in use by the various F1 hybrid zinnia seed producers.

"That last flower looks like a flame of sorts--with the mixed yellows, reds, and oranges. Pretty colors!"

As that bloom matured for the last several days, it has had a lot of color fading in the original guard petals while the scabious center filled in.

I have noticed that some zinnia colors fade quickly, while others seem to be very fade resistant. The fading is not necessarily a bad thing. The zinnia variety Exquisite fades to produce a variety of shadings, and that is considered to be a desirable feature of that cultivar.

"And, that is a really compact plant you have there! I wonder what the potency of the hormone solution that you use is over time? I know some forms easily break down, others not so readily. "

I'm wondering about that PGR potency and breaking-down-thing myself. Until this zinnia generation, my indoor zinnias tended to be under-dosed with PGR. Now I am seeing a lot of plants that look a little over-dosed. I have been re-using the medium from discarded zinnias, and I am beginning to suspect that the Topflor tends to persist for quite some time in the growing medium.

"Scabious plants for me are hardly ever so bushy as the other kinds of zinnias. When I grow them in rows in my large garden, I can always tell from a distance which are the scabious, because they have less branching and leaves. It would be nice to get a bushy form. "

Some of my scabious hybrids have had the bushiest zinnias I have ever seen, although they are somewhat tall. It is a vertical oval plant shape, but very branched. The Burpeannas have a more horizontal bushiness, but some of them have their side branches in a "candelabra" plant form, in which the side branch leaves the main stem in approximately a right angle. That resulting cantilevered structure seems to be inherently weak at the main stem joint, so that those side limbs are susceptible to breaking off in high winds. A side branch seems to be more structurally sound if it emerges from the main stem while sloping upward some. That also tends to have a thicker joint.

In my view, plant habit is an important zinnia trait, and I definitely watch for good and bad plant habits. A good bushy plant does need some room to develop properly. I still remember the picture in that old Burpee catalog of that first introduction of Burpeeana zinnias. The plant shapes were intermediate between spherical and hemispherical, but they were lined up against a wall or fence in an impressive landscaping display of a zinnia hedge with big double blooms in a medley of colors.

ZM

I agree with you about the plant habit--it's desirable to have lots of branching, but in a form that is strong and can resist wind, etc. I haven't really taken notice of my scabious hybrid F1s, but the first generation of the scabious zinnias I have obtained from many commercial sources tend collectively to be kind of sparse as branching goes. It may be that the second generation improves in that trait.

It looks like fall has truly come! All our leaves are down and it's getting rainy and chilly. The seed catalogs are starting to arrive with all their color and promise for the garden next summer. So far I see nothing new in the way of zinnias, except a form of taller Profusion Red Profusion Knee High Zinnia that comes in red as well as white.

I'm thinking I should start thinking about resistance to mildew, too, and get some of the traits associated with that (in Z. elegans or violaceae), into the garden. Thus far, I see a listing for "mildew tolerance" with Stokes zinnias, the "Sun Series," (#1436M), the online catalog link being Stokes Storefront .

I will mention more vendors as I see mildew resistance (no advertisement intended here).

JG

Fall has truly come here, too. And Winter is not too far away. We have had two large-flaked snows, which melted off within hours. Oddly, many of my outdoor zinnias have survived this lousy weather almost unscathed. I think that the explanation for that may be the Bayer Advanced All-In-One Rose & Flower Care that I treated them with. It apparently made them immune to both insects and mildew. With temperatures in the 30's and 40's and lots of cloudy days, I have no doubt that they will succumb in some way. But the longer they hang on, the better chance they have of developing some viable seed from the crosses I made toward the end of the season. I quit pollinating the outdoor zinnias about a month ago.

Your idea about looking for mildew resistance in Z. violacea is a good one. I plan to do the same thing. I grew some tetraploids last Summer to see if they might have some inherent Powdery Mildew resistance, and they didn't. I'm kind of glad of that, because I don't want to get involved in producing tetraploid strains of zinnias, at least not for the time being.

So far, my unapproved indoor use of the All-In-One has been successful for preventing both disease and insect problems, with no obvious "gotchas". I do dilute the indoor All-In-One applications to one-third strength or weaker, and I try to form a mental image of how much might be accumulating in the pots and how much might be leaching out. I'm kind of "flying by the seat of my pants" on this. But so far, so good.

For me, the fun part of breeding zinnias is that new forms show up in the recombinants. I like the flower form on this recent indoor bloom:

It has rather long narrow petals and an informal "open" flowerform that I like. It gets breeder status based on that. It reminds me a little bit of a dandelion. I would like to get a zinnia strain in a complete color range with that flowerform.

I am continuing my research and study on the subject of micropropagation by tissue culture, and I have joined the Home Tissue Culture Group. A shipment of baby food jars is on the way to me now, and I plan to purchase a tissue culture kit next month. I think that I really need to learn the tissue culture propagation of zinnias, in case a really exciting and exceptional specimen appears. (I am still waiting for those giant scabiosa-type florets to show up.) The asexual propagation of zinnias by cuttings has been a help, but it is difficult to get more than a few cuttings from a single plant. Tissue culture offers the possibility of a much higher multiplication ratio.

I continue to enjoy my indoor zinnia gardening. More later,

ZM

That is a really beautiful flower you have there! I would definitely try to get a strain of those! And I, of course, would gladly accept some seeds ;-)...I hope you can keep that one going. I like it a lot, and I'm sure many others would, too! I notice a few of the petals are forked on the end-- I always have thought that this an interesting trait, too.

Somewhere on the internet I saw (don't have reference now) that spraying a solution of baking soda on leaves would help prevent spread of mildew. Wonder if that really works?
I did use the All-in-One product as you did and found it to be very effective in keeping back the mildew. Probably an application in early September would be very protective for the rest of the season.

I look forward to following your progress on the tissue culture. Do you plan to use buds from a single plant as the explants? I joined that group sometime ago, I believe, so I could ask a question about zinnias, but didn't get back after there were no answers. I think I already had mentioned the zinnia micropropagation paper to you a while back. It may be a good starting point.

JG

I will be looking forward to sharing seeds with fellow zinnia breeders like you when my strains become more dependable. As it is, very few of my progeny resemble their seed parent and some of my seed packages have failed to produce a single "keeper". I wouldn't want to waste anyone's time or growing space on fugitives from the compost pile.

"...spraying a solution of baking soda on leaves would help prevent spread of mildew. Wonder if that really works?"

The use of baking soda as a fungicide is widely accepted. Sodium bicarbonate does inhibit the spread of mildew, and it is widely used as a home remedy for that purpose. However, the excessive use of sodium can cause some sodium phytoxicity. A better choice is potassium bicarbonate, since the potassium can actually be used by the plant and its bicarbonate is just as effective or more so than the sodium bicarbonate. Several commercial anti-mildew products are based on potassium bicarbonate, including the GreenCure® that I still frequently spritz on my indoor zinnias.

Potassium bicarbonate does have several limitations, though, that cause me to resort to Bayer Advanced All-In-One Rose & Flower Care. Potassium bicarbonate (and GreenCure) both remain water soluble on the plant, and readily wash off. They are not systemic, so you have to coat both the top and bottom surfaces of the leaf for complete protection. And zinnias grow rapidly from day to day and the new growth is not protected by a non-systemic.

"I notice a few of the petals are forked on the end-- I always have thought that this an interesting trait, too."

The petals on the specimen pictured above (code-named C69) also have a unique curved, pointed shape that I like. I do take notice of individual petal shapes.

This following is a picture of a specimen that has attracted my attention lately.

It's not particularly attractive in many regards, since it seems to be rather wild and disorganized, but it has some features that intrigue me. The picture above was of a bloom on a cutting plant, whose "donor" was code-named C65 and was first pictured back in Part 12 on Sun, Aug 16, 09 at 3:06. I have never seen a zinnia that looks quite like C65, so I have been using its pollen and taking cuttings from it. C65's flowers are a little too wild even for my taste, but they have a couple of features that really attract me. Its flowers are quite large (about 25% larger in diameter than most of my other zinnias) and its plants are strong with nice long pointed leaves. And, oddly, its stigmas are at least twice the size of most zinnia stigmas.

Zinnia C65 has a "prehistoric" look (it is the indoor "dinosaur zinnia" in our household) and I think it is possible that multiple genetic recombinations have brought some long-lost zinnia phenotypes to the surface here. I think this specimen has definite possibilities as a breeder, with its potential for creating larger zinnias with open flowerforms. And its huge stigmas make it easier to pollinate them.

ZM

" Do you plan to use buds from a single plant as the explants?"

Yes, meristematic explants seem to offer the best likelihood of successful zinnia multiplication. But I also plan to experiment with just about every possible kind of zinnia explants to see what works and what doesn't work. It would be particularly convenient if I could get shoots to form from small pieces of leaf tissue. African Violets will root from conventional leaf cuttings and, not surprisingly, they can be coaxed to produce many shoots from small pieces of leaf tissue in a tissue culture. Like I said, I plan to try a lot of different things with zinnia tissue culture.

" I think I already had mentioned the zinnia micropropagation paper to you a while back. It may be a good starting point."

Was that the Micropropagation of Zinnia chapter by M.A.L. Smith in "High-Tech and Micropropagation VI (Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry) (v. 6)"? That chapter is readable via Amazon's Click to Look Inside! feature. Just enter "zinnia" in the search box that appears at that link and click on the "page 296" link that comes up in the Search results. There isn't a lot of information on zinnia tissue culture protocols, but I can experiment with protocols for other composites.

This photo of the "dinosaur zinnia" (C65) shows its huge stigmas a bit better than the previous photo.

I am still repotting some of the C65 cuttings from 3-inch square pots to 5-inch square pots. My indoor zinnia gardening does keep me busy.

ZM

I wouldn't be surprised at all if your dinosaur zinnia is a polyploid of some sort with its large flower and stigmas! You will probably be able to determine that if crossings of that with your other zinnias produce little or no progeny. It will be also very interesting to see if you get progeny from selfings, and then, if so, what they are like!

My experience with tissue culture (limited to one type of plant) resulted in a good number of polyploids, and their appearance gave many of them away with their unusually large features.

Speaking of tissue culture, the paper that I was referring to was the one by Rogers, Smith, and Cowen (Euphytica 61: 217-223, 1992)-- a source of much of the information in the Micropropagation of Zinnia chapter you mentioned above. Probably the best of those results were reported in the chapter. Have you ever tried the metalarc lights?

JG

" I wouldn't be surprised at all if your dinosaur zinnia is a polyploid of some sort..."

Yikes! I never considered that C65 might be a polyploid. If it is a tetraploid, that would actually cause me to re-evaluate my negative attitude toward tetraploid zinnias. I have been crossing C65 with other breeders and other breeders with it. I may have been creating a lot of triploid zinnia seed, which, even if they germinate and grow, will almost certainly be sterile. Maybe I had better start looking for a source of colchicine in earnest. So far, the only sources that I have found for colchicine limit their sales to educational and research institutions. I could double the chromosomes of triploids to get hexaploids. I wonder if hexaploid zinnias are any good.

" Speaking of tissue culture, the paper that I was referring to was the one by Rogers, Smith, and Cowen (Euphytica 61: 217-223, 1992)"

Thanks for that comment. It encouraged me to renew my literature search for more up-to-date material, and I did find some new information. I think a significant amount of new zinnia info may be available. This article, and the references in it, are a case in point.

Influence of medium formula and silver nitrate on in vitro plant regeneration of Zinnia cultivars by Jackrit Anantasaran and Kamnoon Kanchanapoom. That article refers to Persian Carpet zinnias as "Percient Carpet", possibly due to a translation artifact from their seed source, AFM Flower Seed Co., Ltd., Thailand. Based on that article and others, I have decided to obtain a small quantity of silver nitrate for use in my tissue culture experiments with zinnias. Apparently silver nitrate neutralizes ethylene, and ethylene is an auxin with potentially undesirable effects in a tissue culture. However, I think the presence of chloride ions will precipitate the silver as silver chloride, so that is something I need to keep in mind.

" Have you ever tried the metalarc lights? "

Not yet. HID lights are bright and expensive. They are better than fluorescents for growing larger plants (like some of my big zinnias), so I haven't ruled them out as a future improvement to my indoor zinnia growing. I have purchased the Gardening Indoors with H.I.D. Lights book. However, most people use rather low light intensities for tissue culture work, so it will be a few months before I branch out to HID for my indoor gardening. My fluorescent lights are pretty bright, particularly the over-driven ones.

I continue to get "echinacea flowered" specimens in my recombinants, like this one.

I like the whitish base color of its guard petals. Sometimes white areas like that become colored as the bloom ages. But I did a lot of pollination with the first white-based zinnia that I found when I was in Maine, and that white-based effect keeps reappearing in my recombinants, which is fine with me.

ZM

Here is an interesting color that bloomed among my Benary's Giant zinnias in late October (I planted only purple, lilac and deep rose colors). The zinnias were a huge hit with the Monarch (and other) butterflies.

Still no deer damage and I have left only one clump of zinnias since we've had several frosts. The deer have been through the garden (lots of tracks) but didn't try the Benary's Giant Zinnias.

Cameron

That top Benary's Giant appears to have three different colors on its petals: magenta tips, blending to yellow, and with scarlet at the base. Very interesting, and unusual for a Benary's. Sometimes color patterns like that fade to a more solid color as the bloom ages, but they do look good in all stages. I have noticed that cool weather seems to make my outdoor zinnia colors look more intense.

I'm going to take credit for the Cornell link, and I'm glad you liked it. I spritzed my indoor zinnias with GreenCure again today. It's totally safe, and it may provide a little carbon dioxide to the plant leaves as well, although I am not sure of that. Some greenhouse growers have systems for providing extra carbon dioxide to help their plants grow faster. Anyway, I am exhaling carbon dioxide for my indoor zinnias as I type this (grin). And they, in turn, are shooting some oxygen back to me. So it's a win-win trade.

ZM

It turned out not to be a heart attack but still some serious heart artery problem and whoa, they cut my chest open, stopped my heart for half an hour, and the whole surgery went for 4 hours.

Now I recovering. Everyone including every doctors that I saw congratulated me for being alive and said how lucky I am. I am ok but a little slow now.

After I went home from the hospital and was able to move a little, I went out to see my zinnia patches. All the flowers have faded of course, so I could not keep track of the parenthood details. I did separate them in areas so at least I know what types (varities) they are from.

So for next year, I will just use some of the seeds and plant them and see what I will get... not so organized but for the first year I guess it is ok. Just having some random pollination is fun too.

And life is precious!

Dave

We are so very glad to have you back. Life is indeed precious! Your random plantings next year may very well provide some interesting zinnia results. Zinnias are full of surprises. We look forward to your comments and pictures.

ZM

Speaking of zinnias being full of surprises, sometimes when you are inspecting your zinnias very closely, you may see some little detail that is really unusual, as in this picture:

Incidentally, I am still using my wife's point-and-shoot camera, which doesn't even have screw threads on the lens to allow adding a closeup lens, so I can't take true closeups yet. This picture is just a small section cropped out of a "regular" picture, so it is a rather crude substitute for a closeup. But it does show some odd little "feelers" emerging from the bloom.

They don't look like stigmas and they aren't "chaffy scales", but they look somewhat like a cross between the two. Perhaps they are modified stigmas, or perhaps they are modified chaffy scales. Or maybe they are a new flower component. I have no idea if they have any functionality.

The odd rock-like object in the photo is just a malformed upside-down petal that apparently was trying to "get in on the act." If I had known it was going to be such a distraction in the picture, I might have removed it.

But this is the picture, warts and all. I am using this zinnia as a breeder, so I may see those strange flower elements again. They are something a zinnia can do, so some of you may also see them in your zinnias.

ZM