Hello again, carebear,
Well, we still have electricity, so I will continue.
carebear2056 said:As for cross breeding, when do you actually do it?
I cross pollinate any time there is pollen available on a zinnia that I like well enough to want to use. Zinnia pollen does not stay viable for more than a few hours, and I like to beat the bees to it, so as soon as a pollen floret opens in the morning, it is fair game for being picked and applied to the stigmas of a female breeder zinnia. Some zinnia blooms never produce pollen florets, so they are convenient to use as females. But if a zinnia bloom is producing pollen florets and yet you want to use it as a female, you can remove any pollen florets it produces and discard them or use them to pollinate other zinnias.
A zinnia bloom can produce pollen for many days or even weeks. So you could be making the same cross with the same bloom every day for many days. A single zinnia bloom could produce 50 to 100 zinnia seeds, and pollinate many more seeds on a different bloom on a different plant. Since a zinnia plant can have many blooms, a single zinnia plant could produce a very large number of zinnia seeds -- enough to fill a whole zinnia garden with plants.
carebear2056 said:It took me a little while to understand that the flower takes days to fully open. I was cutting them and bringing them inside before they were fully open. I am still not sure what that does to the development. I know some flowers open up anyway but not sure with zinnias yet.
Zinnias are fairly complex, or at least they can seem that way. They are composites, which means that a zinnia bloom consists of many "flowers".
Botanically, a flower is defined as any part of a plant that can produce a seed. A zinnia petal can produce a seed at its base, so a single zinnia petal is actually a "flower". Also, a zinnia pollen floret can also produce a selfed seed at its base (a somewhat different looking seed), so it is also a "flower". A developing zinnia bloom is producing new pollen florets and petals daily, so it adding many new "flowers" to its composite bloom every day.
carebear2056 said:When you make a cross, do you wait until they are fully open or when exactly do you do it?
You can use a pollen floret as soon as it opens in the morning. You can apply pollen to a stigma as soon as its petal is fully open and the stigma accessible.
<b>A stigma can remain viable and receptive for over a week. However, when it is successfully pollinated, it will shrivel and die in the next day or two.</b> So feel free to apply pollen to any stigma that is still yellow and "perky" looking.
carebear2056 said:Also, do you keep the seeds from both flowers? I understand it is the one you apply the pollen to that will have the cross but I am just curious of your seed saving practices.
I frequently do save seeds from both
blooms, because I have decided that I "like" both well enough to use them as breeders.
carebear2056 said: If I want to put the pollen from one on another, can I cut the one I get the pollen from and bring it inside for a vase? If I have flowers in a vase, would their seeds be viable if I hang them to dry once they are spent?
Yes, you can use a pollen floret from a zinnia bloom in a vase. You can also potentially obtain usable seeds from zinnia blooms in a vase.
carebear2056 said: Do I have to wait for the flower to die on the plant to attain viable seeds?
No, you can save viable green seeds from a zinnia bloom that is not "dead". In fact, that is actually a better way to do it than the usual practice of letting the bloom die and become brown. That may be one of those questions that you have found covered in more detail in an earlier message.
More later. (To be continued).
EDIT
I am belatedly editing this message to correct this statement, which I made above, and I have recently learned is incorrect.
"A stigma can remain viable and receptive for over a week. However, when it is successfully pollinated, it will shrivel and die in the next day or two."
The underlined portion is incorrect. I have since learned later in the Summer that the statement is not always true. Sometimes a stigma will remain yellow and apparently "receptive" when it has actually successfully fertilized an embryo in its attached seed. Participants in another forum posted pictures of live yellow stigmas attached to obviously plump and virile green seeds. So, live and learn. If a stigma seems to be stubborn and remain yellow, you can bypass it and pollinate some more newly emerged stigmas instead.
END EDIT
ZM
