Hi guys,
This stuff about zinnia seeds is interesting. But I think it all is about the dry brown seeds as they come from a seed packet. If you look carefully at a zinnia bloom as it develops, you will notice that the stigmas at the base of the petals sort of die after they get pollinated, turn brown, and shrivel up some. The stigmas may even become detached and fall away, leaving the petal with a green seed at its base, and as the flower head matures, those green seeds become the familiar brown seeds.
In my hobby of breeding zinnias, I pick those plump green seeds to speed things up. However, the green seeds are very slow to germinate if I just plant them, because their green jacket is waterproof. That would be frustrating because I wanted to get the seeds to grow as quickly as I could.
It occurred to me that the problem was that the green seed coat was water-proof, and that made a lot of sense. If it rained on a zinnia flower and the seeds all sprouted immediately, that would be bad.
So, if I wanted the green seeds to grow quickly, I would need to breach the waterproof jacket in some way. I used a hobby knife to slice off some of the seed coating. Occasionally, the inside of the seed would slip out, and I realized that it was the embryo of a baby zinnia sprout. You could see that the embryo was actually a teeny tiny baby seedling, with a tap root end and a pair of embryonic ivory-colored seed leaves.
I was delighted that I could plant just the embryo and get a zinnia sprout very quickly. So, as an experiment, I extracted the embryos from several zinnia petals, planted a whole flat of zinnia embryos, and got a very quick bunch of zinnia seedlings. That green seed technique let me get a new generation of zinnias
a whole month sooner than the standard way of letting the seedhead turn brown with dry brown seeds. It is not tornado-proof, but the accelerated schedule lets me grow
four generations of zinnias per year.
That graph paper is ruled 10 lines per inch. Click on the photo to see a larger version, which you can close by clicking on the "X" in the lower right-hand corner.
ZM
