Jai_Ganesha said:I also have plants that were initially grown by other home gardeners. This year I have some packets of zinnias from the 1960s that were never opened. I am going to treat them with Physan-20 and plant them in May or June just to see if any come up.
Don't get the Physan 20 too strong. I ran some experiments. A dilution of 4 tablespoons per gallon is noticeably phytotoxic to zinnia seedlings. 8 tablespoons per gallon is almost herbicidal. One tablespoon per gallon seems to be tolerated by seedlings. Seedlings germinated in 2 tablespoons per gallon, but showed some signs of phytotoxicity. I have been using 2
teaspoons per gallon on my current germinating seeds. Those experiments were done on white cactus zinnia seeds from Hazzards. I still have some of those. Maybe I will plant them in my South Garden along with the old Whirligigs.
Keep us posted, but I expect seeds from the 1960's to zero-germinate. They might germinate if they had been stored in very cold, possibly cryogenic storage, but I will be
very surprised if you get any germination at all from those. You might get some response from those ancient seeds in tissue cultures, but there you would just be looking for single surviving cells, and not a whole surviving embryo.
Jai_Ganesha said:I also have Карусе́ль (Carousel) seeds harvested by a friend in Ukraine less than a mile from the Chernobyl radioactive exclusion zone. The pictures she sent me were of plants that were shorter, stockier, and darker than I would immediately think of, and the flowers were all bicolors of some sort or another. If nothing else, they represent a fresh genetic stock.
Do you know anyone with a Geiger counter? If so, I would test those seeds. They might be radioactive. But they might produce some interesting mutations. Radioactivity has been used as a tool in plant breeding, although not so much anymore.
Jai_Ganesha said:But part of the fun of growing seed mixes and hand-collected seeds is that there's more room for variation.
Yes, I too enjoy the natural variation that zinnias exhibit, which is why I like to make hybrids between hybrids to amplify that variation. This bloom has a little of the loose, open, informal bloom style that I like.
I particularly like those long petals that hang down almost vertically, giving the bloom a lot of space-filling capability. Today I will be doing some cross pollinating, as well as re-potting. The weather outside here is cold and very windy. I am quite glad to be pursuing my hobby indoors under bright fluorescent lights.
ZM
