Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 2 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
W. Atlee Burpee, or maybe it was his son David, had the idea that if they could get a true white marigold, that getting a complete color range in marigolds would then be "relatively easy".

Eventually someone did get the $10,000 prize for a white marigold, although in my opinion it was not a true white. And the extended color range never came. As a kid on the farm, I tried repeatedly to cross marigolds and zinnias because I thought that the extended zinnia color range would be really great in marigolds. I also tried to cross watermelons and cantaloups. Needless to say, those crosses were never successful.

Zinnias have a wide range of whites and "near whites". Perhaps the whitest zinnia cultivar is White Wedding from Burpee. It was developed by Ball, which is now the parent company of Burpee after Burpee faced bankruptcy along about the year 2000, and was bought by Ball.

http://www.burpee.com/flowers/zinnias/zinnia-white-wedding-p...

White Wedding also has a white center. The color of the center of zinnias is governed by some different genes than the petal color, so occasionally I see white or near white zinnias with various dark colors of centers. It's not a bad look.

Zinnias come in every color except blue. Irises come in a complete color range, including several shades of blue. If irises weren't so "slow", I would be breeding them for that reason. But zinnias are more like the "fruit flies" of the flower kingdom, with four generations per year being attainable if you grow two generations inside and two generations outside. I do that. The zinnia seeds germinate in two to six days, and flower in five to six weeks. And then by planting green seeds or excised embryos, you can have a second generation going in a little over two months from the time you started the first generation.

I think if you really "pushed it", you could get six generations of zinnias in a year. And you can grow zinnias from cuttings, and I don't recall anyone propagating iris in that way. Someone should probably experiment with that. Also, tissue culture of iris might open up some possibilities.

I expect that zinnias will eventually get blues via genetic engineering, and then they will have a color range comparable to iris and orchids and such. But I don't expect that to occur for several years. I expect that genetic engineering will eventually make it possible to cross zinnias with marigolds. Or even cross zinnias with irises. It will be "a brave new world".

ZM


This message was edited Aug 13, 2013 9:38 AM