Swizzle or whirlygig zinnias

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Lenjo Mount Angel, OR(Zone 8a) Aug 15, 2004

I have grown these now for the second year and they are wonderful. Two colors in one bloom, orange and pink combinations are so pretty. I got my seed from Stokes and they are so reasonable. I have planted the Envy zinnia too and Persian carpet. Just love em. I was wondering if zinnias cross pollinate and so if you saved seed do you think they would stay true to the variety you originally planted?

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Zen_Man Ottawa, KS(Zone 5b) Sep 01, 2004

Lenjo,

The majority of zinnia seed are selfed, but a significant number of seed are pollinated by some other flower, quite possibly another flower on the same plant. Bumblebees, carpenter bees, and honey bees are big pollinators of zinnias, so some cross pollination is likely.

But if you save your own seed, you will get a high percentage of "true" plants from your seed, although some will likely be different due to pollination by another zinnia. Obviously, if you save seed from F1 hybrid zinnias you will get a random re-mix of genes so you will see some zinnias you never saw before. If you have the growing space to grow a lot of zinnias, you can get some interesting new zinnias this way.

It's easy to pollinate zinnias with tweezers or tweezer scissors (twissors), so if you have a good zinnia you want to same seed from, you can use your tweezers to apply that zinnia's own pollen to the stigma at the base of every petal in order to insure "selfed" seed. Or, if you want to make your own hybrids, use pollen from a different zinnia. There are so many different kinds of zinnias, the number of crosses you can make is astronomical. And for really interesting results, make crosses between crosses. It's a good idea to tag the flower with a note describing the female & male plants.

MM

This message was edited Sep 1, 2004 2:43 AM

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Lenjo Mount Angel, OR(Zone 8a) Sep 04, 2004

Thanks for the information , Maineman. We usually do save a lot of our own seed and they grow just fine; but this year I have the whirlygig and Envy zinnia right out in the same vicinity as everything else. I even planted a row of just red and they are really stunning all by themselves without other colors mixed in.

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