Hi all,
It is hot and humid here in east central Kansas. I think my zinnias like this weather better than I do. I am growing a number of commercial zinnia varieties to add to my genetic mix. I am growing Whirligigs and Burpeeanas from Stokes Seeds, and those seeds were produced by a grower in Tanzania. I am also growing Giants of California from Eden Seeds and Benary's Giants (I got those from Johnny's Selected Seeds). I intend to make crosses between selected specimens from those commercial varieties and some of my selected recombinant.
I grew some zinnias indoors during the winter, and this is an indoor zinnia that I referred to as "Bed Head" because of the tousled look of its petal arrangement. As always, you can see a larger version of the pictures by clicking on them, and for a somewhat larger version still, hit your F11 key to hide your browser's heading material. You can get your browser headings back by hitting the F11 key again. Scroll to lower righthand corner of the big picture and click on the arrow there to close the picture and return you to normal viewing.
This is a recombinant specimen growing in my zinnia patch now, that has a similar tousled petal arrangement.
I have been trying to cross my Razzle Dazzle strain of zinnias with larger zinnias, with the goal of increasing the size of the Razzle Dazzles. This is one of my current Razzle Dazzle zinnias.
My crosses between "regular" big zinnias and Razzle Dazzles don't yield hybrids that look like they might have something like a Razzle Dazzle as a parent. Instead the RD genes cause odd variations to the flower form of the big zinnia, like the Bed Head look. Sometimes the effect is rather extreme, like this example.
And sometimes the effect is quite subtle, like in this recombinant.
I rather like the colors and flower form of that specimen. It reminds me somewhat of the flower form of my zinnias that I refer to as "Aster Flowered". This was one of my Aster Flowered zinnias in a previous year.
The Aster Flowered zinnias are characterized by long somewhat narrow petals, somewhat loosely spaced. They arose from crosses between cactus flowered zinnias and Whirligigs. I named my Razzle Dazzle strain after the Gaillardia strain by the same name, which has similar looking blooms. This is a picture of one of my zinnias, but it could just as well be a picture of a Razzle Dazzle Gaillardia.
Well, I just wanted to reestablish communications about my zinnia breeding project. I would be having a lot more fun with it if it weren't so hot and humid. More later.
ZM
