Hybridizers: It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 5, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hi Robin,

"Am I understanding that you will not pay that much attention to the beauties you create because you're focused on other breeding goals."

I am not totally ignoring any of my zinnias that I consider to be of "breeder quality". It is true that I neglected to pollinate the Pagoda specimen a lot this year, because I was much more focused on making cross pollinations between my new star-petaled mutant and some of my tubular petaled specimens in an attempt to get new and improved variations of that new petal form.

The flower form of the Pagoda zinnia is not as rare as the star petaled form, so the star petaled form got much more of my time this year. However, I share your admiration for the Pagoda flower form, and I will continue to develop that unusual cactus flowerform as well. I plan to grow a lot of my cross-pollinated cactus flowered zinnias next year, looking for further improvement in size and flower form. But I will also be growing a lot of the progeny from the star petaled mutant, looking for further improvements to the tubular petal structure and the flower forms that have it. And I have several other ongoing zinnia projects.

"I'd like to buy all three of those Zinnias..."

I took up this zinnia hobby purely for my personal enjoyment, with no intention of ever selling anything. And although my successes have been much more than I originally anticipated, I still don't anticipate selling or distributing my zinnia seeds. After some of my new zinnia strains become stable, I will want them to become available, and I might entertain selling them to a seed company who would have the facilities to grow them in commercial quantities and make them available to the general public. But that is years in the future, and for the time being I plan to continue this zinnia hobby purely for the fun of it. I do consider your offer to buy all three of them as the ultimate compliment, and I thank you for that compliment.

"...I think you should register them. To my mind, they are unique and very pleasing, why not register them?"

I agree with you that they are unique and pleasing, but I don't know of any Registry for Zinnias. Zinnias aren't like daylilies or irises or dahlias or roses, in that zinnias are primarily grown from seeds, and not from rhizomes or bulbs or tubers or grafted rootstock or such. It is true that zinnias can be grown asexually from cuttings or tissue cultures, but that is not done commercially. At least, not currently. So, at this time, registering zinnias is probably not an option.

I am attaching pictures of my star petaled mutant. It got a lot of my attention this year. It has obvious flaws, such as the brown tips on the points on the stars, but it is a different new petal structure for zinnias. I want to explore the possibilities of recombining its genetics with some of my other zinnias, including those with tubular type petals. I continue to look for new flower forms in zinnias.

ZM