Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 6, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
I am also continuing to save zinnia seed. I did just save seed from a white zinnia separately, and I may grow a few of them indoors. White is an interesting zinnia color. Most of the zinnia colors are based on some of several organic \"dyes\", but there is no \"white dye\", so I assume that white zinnia petals must achieve their whiteness by some kind of cellular structure. I doubt that an actual white pigment is involved. As an amateur artist I have used a fair amount of titanium white pigment, but I strongly doubt that white zinnias contain any titanium pigment, or white pigment of any sort.

My best guess would be that the white petals contain what they call a structural color -- the same principle as a white snowflake that melts to clear water, and the individual parts of the snowflake may consist of clear crystalline ice.

Many years ago, and I mean many, the Burpee seed company had a strain of cactus zinnias that they called Luther Burbank, and it consisted almost entirely of many pastel shades, in many different \"paint chip\" colors. I strongly suspect that all of those pastel colors involved one or more crosses with white zinnias. And today the best looking green zinnia (in my opinion), the Tequila Lime from Burpee, looks like it is a cross between a green zinnia and a white zinnia. I think white is a good color to use in crosses with other zinnia colors, because just like a white background in a painting can improve the look of the colors over it, I think that white can improve zinnia colors.

It is still freaky warm here for November, and I am attaching a picture of my South Zinnia Garden taken only a few days ago. Last year at this time the blackened remains of a very hard killing frost were already in trash bags for disposal at our local landfill. I don\'t compost zinnia material to keep down the disease problems.

ZM