Hybridizers: How do I get this Zinnia recognized?, 0 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Daniel,

Continue to save seeds from this cultivar, and as you grow more plants from it, discard the "rogue" plants that don't resemble what you are going for. Once you get a significant amount of reasonably "true" seed, you could contact a seed company like Parks to see if they want to grow it in their trials. I have seen Parks offer a zinnia cultivar from a private individual in their catalog in the past. That particular zinnia cultivar was notable because it was extra tall (over 5 feet). I was disappointed that it didn't appear in this year's catalog.

When you are trying to create a new strain by selection and re-selection, it helps to have a lot of space to grow a lot of zinnias in.

If you have some bigger pictures of your zinnias, we could see them better. Dave's Garden allows your pictures to be up to 1000 pixels wide before they get automatically downsized. To be "on the safe side" I usually post pictures here at 992 pixels wide. This is a closeup of one of my current "breeders" that has an unusual wildly open flower form. I like unusual zinnia flower forms. I plan to grow a lot of progeny from it. Actually, this flower is on an indoor-grown cutting from the original "donor" plant (which amazingly, is still alive outdoors, despite all of our recent cold, clammy Fall weather.) You can increase zinnias asexually by taking cuttings. And you can increase them even more so by using tissue culture to perform micropropagation. I am studying tissue culture right now, and plan to eventually use it in my zinnia breeding hobby.

ZM