It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 53
zen_man
4 years ago
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Jay 6a Chicago
4 years agozen_man
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It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 9
Comments (112)Greetings! I have read with interest these related threads and have been motivated to plant quite a few zinnias this year. I got a bit of a late start, but I'll make the best of it! I am fortunate to have a long growing season, so that will help. What prompted my post is the discovery of several abnormal seedlings in one particular row. This closely planted row is all seed from one particular flower head collected in 2007 and labeled orange single. I am not certain of its exact origin, though I know tht year I planted a State Fair mix as well as a Pastel Dreams mix from Seeds of Change. My guess would be the tetraploid State Fair mix....but that just decreases the odds of something like this showing up, doesn't it? This row has 82 seedlings germinated and 4 have the completely yellow cotyledons. Because of the total lack of chlorophyll, I imagine they are not long for this world. Has anyone seen this in their seedlots? This last picture shows the seed coat still attached. - Arlan...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 47
Comments (115)Hi Four, This is an older message thread (Part 47, while Part 51 is current) but I will respond anyway. Yes, in your B photo, the pollen florets are maturing and setting seeds and they probably no longer have nectar for butterflies, so you could could remove that bloom if feeding butterflies is your primary motivation. In your C photo it isn't crucial where on the stem you make the cut.. I would cut down lower on the stem because there isn't any significant advantage to leaving a lot of bare stem on your plant. If you want to make further comments, it would be better to add them to Part 51, which has only 21 comments, while this Part 47 now has well over 100 comments. ZM...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 49
Comments (102)Hello everyone, Well, we did get that expected rain. It came with some winds, but I don't see any obvious wind damage. It is now comfortably cool outside, but very wet. I will shuck zinnia seeds indoors until things dry off a bit. This is one of those current narrow petaled specimens.The tubes are light colored, but unfortunately not white. This is a closer look at some of the petal ends.There is actually quite a bit of variation in the end-of-petal "flare". That suggests that the flares may be partially developmental rather than genetic. The embryo inside the green seed at the base of each petal would be genetically different if it had been fertilized by a pollen grain, either from this plant or from a different one, because it would have been produced by the cellular process known as meiosis, which recombines the genes. In the more likely probability that the embryos are not fertilized at this stage, the cells in the petal flares are produced by mitosis and are genetically the same as the cells in other parts of the bloom, so the variations in the petal-end flares would be developmental and not genetic. Which raises questions as to which of the many variations we see in zinnias are developmental and not genetic. At some time during the coming Winter I hope to purchase a stereo microscope with a camera mount, so that I can take micro-photographs of some of my indoor zinnias. It will not be capable of seeing chromosomes (that takes a serious high-power laboratory grade microscope), but it will hopefully be capable of seeing details like leaf stomata or leaf hairs, from which you can hopefully deduce whether the plant is diploid or tetraploid. That is because I want to develop the capability of producing some triploid zinnias, and to do that it is almost a requirement that I be able to determine the "ploidy" of a zinnia by observation. And the microscope will let me study and photograph my zinnias in more detail. I continue to see little creatures that I refer to as "micro insects". I am curious about them. More later. Namaste. ZM...See MoreIt can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 50
Comments (102)Hi Zen, I was just reading your comment. How can you tell that photos are posted from smart phones? Someone told me when they enlarge my photos they take up their whole screen. I use my phone. It's a lot more comfortable for me. It's a samsung galexy S9. Now my pictures are starting to look a little strange,, or could it be my imagination lol. I have a pic of my basement grow room setup. Not a stock photo lol. I felt bad about putting one on here, and by the time the light bulb went off to simply delete it, the statute of limitations had already ran out on it lol. I was hitting the superstores for some Zinnia seeds, and I found this years selection very depressing. Burpee has some nice cultivars in their catalog that aren't in the stores. I'm not a Burpee fan. I think I did order 2 packets of Gomphrena seeds from them. Theirs were the best deal all around. Hey, now that would be a great genus to experiment with! You could take those plants a lot of different directions. It's a shame some of your better hybrids aren't being sold! I have 5 packets of Zinnia seeds. They're not the ideal 5 that I wanted, but they'll have to do. Zowie Yellow Flame ,( for the hummers ), Pinwheel Mix, 'Forcast', Giant Flowered Mix, Dahlia Flowered Mix. Let me repeat myself once more; just to be perfectly clear! Not my 5 most desired varieties! I love them for their colors and because they're such great butterfly magnets. FYI, the 2 Gomphrena seeds I got are 'Carmine' and 'Fireworks'. Zen, I wanted to ask you, what's the product you use to control spider mights again? I had an issue in the past and really don't want it reoccurring.. It was because I had brought some plants in from outside and I didn't recognize they were infected, then I was detained and kept away from them for a while. By the time I got back to the plants.....yuck! Ninecrow, keep up the good work with those Poinsettias! I'd enjoy seeing pictures! The whole birthing process, everything. I think it's fascinating! I think the metal halide bulb drastically throws off the color. Plants that I'm starting down here. Gomphocarpus physocarpus, Gomphocarpus fruticosa, Gomphocarpus cancellatus, Dregea sinensis, Tweedia caerulea, Tweedia solanoides, Tithonia, Senna didymobata, Mimosa pudica, Salvia coccinea, and the middle tray has seedlings of Calotropis procera. Like I've talked about before; I'm very interested in all the plant species of the subfamily Asclepiadoideae. They are the most difficult to hand pollinate because they produce pollinaria. A lot of hand pollination and hybridization does occur with tropical members of the family that are more and more being grown as houseplants mainly. Well, maybe 50 inside 50 outside. If you are lucky enough too live in a hot arid climate or a hot wet climate you can grow a lot of the tropical ones. Here in Illinois, the best I can do is grow a few of the fast growing tropical ascleps as summer annuals....See Morezen_man
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4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoJay 6a Chicago
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