John_fender said: Another plant of interest is a new species called echibekia (cross between rudbeckia hirta and echinacea) supposed to be more of a perennial rudbeckia hirta but I can't find seeds for it anywhere.
Hi John,
You won't be able to find seeds for Echibeckia because intergeneric crosses are sterile. That is the big disadvantage of intergeneric hybrids. You should be able to buy plants of it, though.
John_fender said: Wonder if you can cross zinnias with a cousin but can't think of any closely related as coneflower is to rudbeckias.
I don't know of any intergeneric crosses involving zinnias. But that sterility thing is a deal breaker for me. There are some successful
inter-species crosses involving zinnias and, in fact, the zinnias I am growing are called
Zinnia hybrida because they have two different species of zinnias as their ancestors,
Zinnia elegans and
Zinnia haageana. Zinnia elegans is frequently called Zinnia violacea in the literature, because all of the commercial Zinnia elegans varieties were originally derived from the wildflower Zinnia violacea. Plant breeders have done a lot with zinnias.
ZM
