Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 3, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hello all,

Since the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 2" message thread has over 113 messages, it is probably getting slow to load for some participants, particularly for any readers with dial-up connections. So we are continuing that message thread here. You can access the Part 2 thread through this link http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/940238/ and it, in turn, has a link to the original zinnia breeding thread.

Occasionally a zinnia that first impresses me as a reject will then reveal some interesting characteristics and I will designate it as a breeder instead of discarding it. That is what happened with the zinnia in the attached picture. Normally I want the petals to be well separated to allow a lot of "air" into the bloom, and I discard zinnias that have tightly packed blooms, as many of the so-called dahlia flowered zinnias have.

But this hybrid-of-hybrids specimen caught my attention with its fairly large almost ball-like bloom, with a lot of substance. Its petals are slightly upcurved, with tips that point downward and have a picotee effect. There are now three blooms on this plant, two of which are faded and senescent. I think I will start pollinating its current bloom to see what comes from this zinnia.

ZM