Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 6, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi Brenda,

You have some nice looking Whirligigs there. I am sorry to say that my Whirligigs from Stokes have been a disappointment this year. Very few that I consider breeder quality. I attached a picture of one of the few "keepers" (Pic #1).

However, there is one thing that appeared in my Stokes Whirligigs patch that surprised me -- namely another tubular mutant !!! I feel sort of like I was struck by lightning twice. So be on the lookout for a tubular mutant in your Stokes Whirligigs. Actually, I don't think that the tubular specimens are an actual mutation that appears in your garden. I think they are a strange rather stable strain that survives in zinnia seed fields "under the radar" and a seed from one occasionally shows up in a commercial seed packet or package. I think a lot of people just don't notice them in among their "regular" zinnias.

My attempts to upgrade the size of my Razzle Dazzles by crossing them with big zinnias results in some rather odd results (Pic# 2). I will keep doing those crosses with bigger RDs in mind, but accepting the odd results as "interesting". I am growing some Giants of California and Benary's Giants (Pics #3 and #4) in order to introduce some "big" genes into the mix. I was inspired to do that by some of your pictures of large zinnias. Pic #5 is a current exotic tubular recombinant. More later.

ZM