Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 2, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
StarLight,

"Are you using a horse haired brush?"

I am using artist brushes with tapered white nylon bristles, because that is what I happened to have on hand.

Lucy, I will experiment with Q-tips, to see how well they work for me. The two brushes that I am currently using came from a packaged set that I purchased in an arts & crafts store several years ago. When I have some time on my hands, I enjoy a little amateur painting, using acrylics, alkyds, or oils. But it has been years since I did any of that.

I like the smaller round pointed brushes for zinnia pollination, because their sharp tips allow picking up just a little dab of pollen and precisely placing it on a stigma. The sharp tips also allow accessing the stigmas inside the lower florets of the scabious-type zinnias.

"I usually pull and dab, but on some plants it is just too hard. I had tried using paint brushes one time, but the problem I found is that the pollen would still fall from the brush as the hairs moved and maybe miss pollinating for sure, and I would have to dab again to be sure and that sometimes there is not enough pollen to hit a second time."

The zinnia pollen seems to stick to my white nylon brushes rather well. Dropping pollen from the brush has not been a problem for me. Perhaps static electricity has something to do with it. I guess I will purchase a few different artists brushes to see if I like any of them better than the white nylon. I'm interested to see if the pollen shows up better on black brushes.

I do like not having to pluck out the florets, because that gives them the opportunity to form floret seeds. Floret seeds have an easily identifiable appearance and it is almost certain that they are selfed. So I can segregate them if I want to. For a really good breeder you want to get as many seeds as possible, selfed or hybridized. I am attaching a picture of another frilly pink breeder and I have been using my white nylon brushes to use its limited amount of pollen as efficiently as I can and also to cross-pollinate and self its stigmas as much as possible.

ZM