Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 5 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi all,

It has continued to be mostly wet. It's raining as I type this, so I haven't had to water my zinnias in quite some while. I continue to get interesting specimens blooming out, because I have been doing succession plantings. Pictures of a few are attached. The three-armed stigmas are unusual.

I see several small insects going in and out of the tubular petals, and I wonder if any of them are carrying pollen. I have had several mysterious situations in which stigmas concealed in tubular petals got pollinated on a large scale.

I stopped planting any more zinnias at the end of July, because although there is plenty of time to get new blooms here from zinnias planted all through the month of August (zinnias bloom in 5 or 6 weeks from seed), there probably wouldn't be time to set and save a good seed yield from them before a killing frost. But I will continue to have new zinnias blooming out for at least another month. So there may be a few more surprises ahead this year.

ZM