Zinnia quiestion

I grow Zinnia 'Fruit Smoothie' from seeds. Soon it'll be time to collect seeds to save them for next summer. I was wondering, if I save seeds of Zinnia 'Fruit Smoothie' will they come true? Does anyone know? Thanks.

Hi, 85Tate,

I planted Fruit Smoothie zinnias from a Burpee seed packet a couple of years ago and they were very cute.

But I didn't save the seeds because I assumed they were a hybrid (probably some kind of elegans or benary's giant) and while they would probably germinate and produce decent blooms, for a couple dollars for a new seed packet I could be sure to get the true bloom.

Our garden is too small to experiment when I can take out the risk for just $1.99 and a visit to Home Depot.

Good luck!

Yeah, that's make sense. Thanks, tabasco.

I would love to know the answer to the zinnia question and whether it applies to any other plant bought. Is there a way to know how true the following yeat's plant will be/
I bought peach colored california zins and saved the seeds. They came back very beautifully but I only had one flower in peach the rest were light to dark pink. I loved the mystery of waiting to see what would happen. And they were free!
Anne

As a general rule of thumb, if something came with a cultivar name attached to it I would assume that it would not come true from seed. There are exceptions of course, but if you're looking for a general guideline that's the safest assumption. Also, if you're growing the same kind of plants in different colors in close proximity to each other, there is potential that they could cross-pollinate and give you something that doesn't look exactly like either of the parents.

In the case of the Fruit Smoothie zinnias, as far as I understand it's a packet of mixed color seeds to begin with, so if you grow them and collect seeds, you'd still get a mix of colors. The proportions of each color may vary from one year to the next (I'm just making this up, but for example over time you might end up with more pinks and less whites)

i started saving seeds from my larkspur about 15 years ago. i went from having an even mix of white, pinks, blues and purples to just blues and lavenders over just a few years. iwas told it was because the pollinaters in my area were partial to those colors.

Maybe that played a role, but I think it's also likely that those are the more dominant colors from a genetics standpoint, so over time as cross-pollination occurs between all your different colors, you'll tend to get more and more seedlings in the more dominant colors.