A seed saving question

Blame this question on the fact that heirloom veggies has become my newest obsession. LOL! I've been reading the book Seed to Seed to learn more about keeping the veggie seeds from cross pollinating.

This has gotten me wondering about saving and trading flower seeds whether they be heirlooms or not? I don't have any heirloom flower seeds to plant next spring, but I do have some seeds to plant. I'm such a new gardener that I'm trying to learn everything I can this winter so I do things right come planting time.

Does anyone worry about the flower seeds crossing and not reproducing to be like the parent? I want to grow these flowers and share seeds, so I need to know if there's something I need to learn about that.

Thank you all for all the help and info I have gotten from you all. I really, really appreciate it.

Joan

Flowers are similar to vegetable saving. You'll find seeds from hybrid plants will not be true to the parent. Some flowers will cross pollinate readily and give you mixed results as well. Columbine (aquilegia species) cross with each other - giving varied results. If you grow more than one aquilegia species in your garden it's likely the seeds from them will be mixed and won't be true to the parent. The opium poppies (papaver somniferum) are big cross pollinaters too. If you have only one variety in your garden they'll be Ok. But two or more varieties will cross with each other. Old fashioned - or heirloom flowers are often the unimproved species and will be true from seed. Many hybrid flowers won't even produce seeds - or the seeds won't be fertile. It's been a trial and error learning experience for me and I assume for most traders too.

Joan

Poppysue is right (not that I need to say that).

I find, and this is just my opinion, that most of the fun of planting open pollinated seeds is you never quite know what the end result will be. Some genus' can be very promiscuous within their own genus, such as Digitalis and Aquilegia, and you can end up with a completely new plant variety, but more often you end up with something which looks like one of the parents. I personally write my tradelist with the parents names shown clearly as parents.

If I want a specific species or cultivar I buy it, while many traders are excellent, it can be quite easy to mis-label a seed packet, I have several packets in my seed box, which I know for sure, aren't what it says it is on the label. If you know that the person collects a particular genus and have grown them for some years, then you are almost guaranteed you will get the correct species.

poppy, how do you keep your poppies from crossing? I collected poppy seeds at the beginning of summer, and would love to be able to pass on the seeds from what I have next year.

Poppies definately cross - and if you want to keep a specific color pure... it's best to only grow only the one variety. Poppies are self fertile and I'll bag un-opened buds (with re-may fabric bags) to keep them from crossing. How effective it is ,,, I don't know. I mostly just let them do their own thing. I plant new and different seeds every year too keep them interesting. Most of the seeds that I've sent out have been open pollinated - and might produce some surprises. I think red is the dominant gene - and over time they'd eventually revert back to red. I've had the double pink ones for years & years. They sometimes produce flowers that aren't so double and I cull any out that I don't like the looks of.

Thank you all so much. I hope this thread keeps going for awhile. I'm learning so much about seed saving. You all are very knowledgable and also very generous to share it with me.
Joan