How to hybridize zinnias -- it's easy.
zen_man
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
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123 456 Tx z9a
6 years agozen_man
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoRelated Discussions
Zinnias from seed (direct)- exactly HOW easy are they?
Comments (5)This is my first year sowing Zinnias directly too. In the past I put them into little peat pellets, let them grow a couple weeks and then put them out. They where always magnificent, the envy of the neighbourhood! Then, last year we where selling the house, and I forgot to get them started. Around June, the agent told me that I needed more "colour" in the garden, so off to the nursery I went to buy my sure fire Zinnias, already started for me! I spent a fortune on them, they where in 4 or 5 inch pots, and almost 8 inches high when I planted them and the result was... PITIFUL! Those poor flowers struggled and clumg for dear life the whole growing season! So, I have become a big believer that direct sown, or sown very closely after germinating is indeed best! since you have so many seeds, I would perhaps throw down some seed when you think you "might" get away with it. but hold some back for the next few weeks, and overseed... This way if frost does get the first bunch, you will have more to try! I have not adivce for birds, but if the seed is burried or raked in, chances are I would think they would leave it alone. As for frost, my mother lives in a zone 1. (Yeah, not a typo). The thing all the old ladies do with their plants, because they do manage to grow things in those 50-75 days they can... is throw a blanket over anything that is frost sensitive for the night if the weather threatens. They all keep a stack of "garden blankets" handy. It is very easy then to cover large areas, quickly, with little fussing! And has worked with excellent results for as long as they can remember!...See MoreAre zinnias self pollinating? How to produce more of a new strain?
Comments (11)Hi Highlander, " Supposedly it's fairly difficult to get a good looking new dahlia breed from seed. " Yes, dahlia breeding, like rose breeding, and most breeding of asexually propagated ornamentals, proceeds by making crosses between hybrids of hybrids of hybrids, ad nauseum. So the existing specimens that you grow and cross-pollinate are themselves highly heterogeneous. So your dahlia crosses will product highly recombined progeny, and they will be full of surprises, most of them rather disappointing, depending on your standards and goals. " If I were to catch a new freshly opened flower bud from the thread related zinnia, and I were to carefully pollinate it manually using pollen from another flower from the same plant, and then isolate it from further pollination by bees carrying pollen from other plants, will it produce flowers with seeds that produce plants with flowers that look the same as these? " Many will be similar, a few will be noticeably different, and a few will be approximately the same. Zinnia populations (like many things) are a Bell Curve kind of thing, with average quality specimens in the head of the bell and a few really good (desirable) and a few really bad (undesirable) specimens in the tails of the bell. Depending on your standards, it takes 5 to 7 generations of careful selection to produce a reasonably pure strain of a zinnia. You aren't going to "get there" in a single generation. I have found a serendipitous thing about trying to stabilize a target strain of zinnias. The random recombinations of genes that appear in your specimens will produce a few specimens that are reasonably similar to your "target" for the strain, but you can get a few recombinants that are actually improvements to your target, and those will usually cause you to redefine your target and self them. Sometimes you will get more than one new target in that process. That is why I frequently say that zinnias are full of surprises. As an example, in my zinnia breeding a few years ago I set out to develop a stable strain of a tubular petaled mutant. The starting point had a red color: and I wanted the strain to have all zinnia colors and larger blooms, so I crossed the red tubular with many different colors of larger zinnias to produce a generation of F1 hybrids. Alarmingly, those produced a variety of different colors and sizes in the F1 generation, but the tubular petal form was gone. I hoped that the tubular trait was just recessive, so I selfed and re-crossed the F1's to produce my F2's and, sure enough, the tubular trait reappeared in a variety of colors and sizes. But I also got recombinant tubulars with much slimmer tubes, and these suggested a second "target" for my tubular project. Zinnias can be full of surprises. " Are zinnias pollinated by wind or by incidental contact with each other or only by insect or bird pollination? " Zinnia pollen grains are too big and heavy to be considered wind pollinated, but air currents within a zinnia bloom can move pollen grains within a bloom. It is unlikely that wind will do any significant amount of pollination between different blooms. Gravity can also carry loose zinnia pollen down from a pollen floret to stigmas below it. Hummingbirds, butterflies, skippers, and day-flying moths seem to get the zinnia nectar from the florets with minimal disturbance, so they are a minor contributor to pollination. Incidental contact could contribute a minor amount of gravity or micro wind current pollination. Bee disturbance, combined with gravity or micro wind currents are probably the main pollination mechanisms. And, of course, the pollen florets are internally pollinated to produce the selfed floret seeds. A pollen floret contains an internal anther bundle and a stigma that pushes up through it to push the pollen out and that stigma usually gets self-pollinated in the process. " The crazy thing is that I had no yellow flowers at all last year, but I ended up with a lemon yellow single this year, which came from a thick double flower that was velvety red! " Yes, the genetic process of recombination can reveal previously hidden traits. Zinnias are full of surprises. ZM...See MoreBreeding Zinnias - for a 11 yod boy
Comments (15)Hi Linda, " I just know that what I read about hybrids - that the first generation would have vigor and the second wouldn't be any good (similar to your mule/donkey example). " Well, in the horse/donkey thing, the first generation is the mule, which does have vigor, but there isn't any second generation, so whether or not the second generation is "any good" or not isn't a valid question. That is an inter-species cross, and you won't be making any inter-species crosses -- at least not until you reach an advanced stage of zinnia breeding. So far none of my inter-specific zinnia crosses have been successful. All of my intra-species zinnia crosses have been successful. And there have been hundreds of them. " I thought this meant when I planted a purchased hybrid like Ichaban Eggplant (the only hybrid in my garden) or some other kind like Better Boy or Early Girl Tomato that I shouldn't keep the seeds. " If you save seeds from an F1 hybrid, the F2 generation won't "come true" and that was covered in the quote from Tychonievich's book that I included above. The seed companies don't want you to be saving any seeds, they want you to keep buying seeds from them. The common advice is not to save seeds from F1 hybrids, because the F2 generation can differ wildly in many different ways from the F1 generation. I am saying that if you are looking for new forms, differing wildly is a good thing, not a bad thing. And I am saying not only should you save seeds from your F1 hybrids, you should go ahead and make various crosses between your F1 hybrids. And simply go wild -- make hybrids between hybrids between hybrids, without stop. They say you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, so break some eggs. Rose breeders routinely make hybrids between hybrids between hybrids for generations to get their marvelous results. Do the same for your zinnias. There is no telling what you might get. And stay on the lookout for interesting mutations, and make liberal use of them when you find them. ZM...See MoreEchinacea home hybrids
Comments (7)Wow that's good to know about why its hard to get viable seeds. Be careful going to the Zinnia thread, you may just find yourself starting to breed Zinnias. zen_man manages to hand pollinate some pretty tricky looking Zinnias, maybe he could give advice on pollinating the double echs? This other post explains in detail how to hand pollinate Zinnias but i'm not sure how close the process would be for Echinacea. How to hybridize zinnias -- it's easy. - If I can get my hands on a double Echinacea I plan to give it a try myself....See More123 456 Tx z9a
6 years agozen_man
6 years ago123 456 Tx z9a
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6 years agoerasmus_gw
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6 years agoRenee
2 years agoHU-649257159
2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago
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