I'm new to zinnias. Why do some of my flowers look full and amazing when others look spindly and sparse with far fewer petals? (See photos) Same plant!! Thx for any answers!

Hello jbh,

I grow and breed zinnias as a fun hobby, and have done that for a number of years.

Your single light green zinnia is actually kind of pretty, as well as being unique. I suggest you save seeds from it.

Having two different blooms appear on the same zinnia plant is unusual, but it happens. Your single bloom is genetically different from the parent plant, and that is something that occasionally happens with zinnias. I grow a lot of zinnias, but I have had that happen only a few times. So it is a fairly rare thing. It can happen to other plants as well, and it is frequently referred to as a "bud sport".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)

Since your "bud sport" zinnia is genetically unique, and is producing pollen florets, you could rather easily cross it with other zinnias, including the parent plant on which it occurs. I notice your green zinnia has a white center, and that is a feature that I like.
My green zinnia came from Burpee Seeds. Incidentally, Burpee featured single zinnias on the cover of their seed catalog a few years ago, so single zinnias have a place. And all zinnia blooms go through a single phase as the bloom develops.
So I don't consider singleness to be a bad feature of your bud sport mutant bloom. Single zinnias can look nice. Do you have any other zinnias in bloom besides your remarkable green one? Those are good photos, by the way.

ZM

I find it not uncommon. I find with some seed strains I've tried over the years, you get a few full flowers and the rest small with less petals and large conelike centers.
Here is an example from the database. I found the photo because Envy was one of the types this has happened.

And here is a picture of Purple Prince
https://www.omcseeds.com/image...
I also recall growing Oklahoma types in the past that lacked petals.
Although I agree that the green single pictured is attractive, I am not usually enamored by the sparse ones I get.

Hi Loretta,

Thanks for your comments and an alternate perspective. Your Envy photo makes your point. The Purple Prince link is not accessible by me. I see a big "493 and Access Forbidden" message. But I definitely accept that would be a picture of Purple Prince with a single second bloom.

" I am not usually enamored by the sparse ones I get. "

Since I am trying to breed "better" zinnias, I usually cull less attractive plants by pulling them up or cutting them off at ground level. Bud sports or regular mutations are candidates for participation in my breeding program. But I tend to like variant zinnias because they are "different" and that can include unusual single zinnias like this one.
This was another single that I liked.
However, I admit that the vast majority of zinnias that I like are double.

ZM

There is a difference between your designer singles and the stunted flowers from the seed packs. Here is another example from last year. I bought Creamy Yellow Giant. I got one really good flower on one of the plants. Unfortunately, someone decided to pick that one so I never saw it fully open. The rest looked like some version of the third photo. This is a type that has semi doubles and doubles. Really, I am always ready for a dud pack of zinnias. I never trust that they will perform well. That is not to say that there aren't some beautiful results available.

The one perfect flower as pictured at website.

Here is a semi double, most likely the second best flower I got from a few plants because it is the one I photographed.

This is how the rest was more or less.

Not to discourage you, jbh61. They are worth growing. I have gotten beautiful results too and that is why I still grow them.

Hello again, Loretta,

You have made your point that those follow-on blooms are inferior in appearance. Why that is the case is a bit of a mystery to me. It seems counter-intuitive that so many blooms would be "bud sport mutations", and it is hard for me to accept that they are genetically different from the original bloom. No question that they are inferior, but it seems improbable to me that they are genetically inferior.

For the most part, I don't see inferior secondary blooms on my zinnias. My secondary blooms are, and have been over the years, quite comparable to my primary bloom on the plant. And I see that with commercial zinnias that I grow, as well as my breeders. At this moment, I have to admit that I simply don't know why you and other zinnia growers are seeing this effect in the secondary blooms.

For the moment, I will speculate that the explanation could be differences in plant nutrition. My indoor zinnia project has forced me to take total responsibility for supplying the elements that my zinnias need, because I grow them in Premier ProMix, which, by design, has very little nutritional content. There are a few bits of limestone that prevent a Calcium deficiency for a couple of weeks, but unless you supply Calcium, you will very quickly see a serious Calcium deficiency. My culture of zinnias in ProMix is essentially a form of hydroponics, in which I supply a nutrient solution and the ProMix simply supplies a structure to hold the plant, its roots, and soluble nutrients in a favorable relation to each other. A different form of hydroponics uses gravel instead of ProMix.

My initial attempts to grow plants indoors under fluorescent lighting in ProMix watered with Orchid nutrients resulted in the catastrophic death of all of the plants within a few weeks, with obvious symptoms of a severe fatal Calcium deficiency. My so-called "complete" orchid nutrients contained zero Calcium. So I purchased some Calcium Nitrate from a hydroponics supply company and, surprise surprise, my indoor plant project became successful. However, my older zinnias showed puckering and folding of the upper leaves, a symptom of Boron deficiency. The orchid nutrients contained trace Boron, but apparently not enough for my zinnias, which tend to act like little Boron pigs. So I added a little extra Boric Acid to my nutrient formula to solve that problem. I also add trace amounts of Nickel, Cobalt, and Silicon because those are not included in the Orchid formulas that I use.

So it is possible that the differences in zinnia bloom development that we are seeing are due to differences in zinnia nutrition. But that is not proven at this point in time. I just can't think of an alternative at the moment.

ZM

I just think certain seed strains are inferior. Those zinnias were grown in very rich soil full of compost at the community garden. Plus our water is very hard, full of calcium. I am sure some of it can be nutritional. But those lousy flowers were among very perfect flowers and plants. It went along the seed packs which flowers were good and which were not. Similar to what you see with the Zinderella series

Hello Loretta,

" I just think certain seed strains are inferior. "

I agree. The Zinderellas are a case in point.

ZM

Many thanks to you both for your learned insights! I love that gardening is full of surprises and lessons. As for my zinnias, I guess when I bought the seeds, I just thought I'd be growing a plant like in the seed catalog, with all the blooms like the picture. Alas, my naïveté!

Good news is that butterflies love any kind of Zinnia bloom. : )

Very true. The love the simplest flowers.

Hi Loretta,

Your Creamy Yellow Giant zinnia may have been performing "as described" by the seed company. For example, Johnny's Seeds says this about their Creamy Yellow Giant zinnia:

"Similar color and habit of the Benary's Giant series but will produce 4-6" single, semidouble, and double flowers."

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/fl...

Johnny's pretty much admits that the Benary's Giants are better zinnias.

ZM

I got mine from Swallowtail and they advertised Double and Semi-double flowers. Singles would be OK if the flower had the centers shown on image searches.I knew the flower was less formal than other types and not a Benary Giant type. You can assume these photos were the best of the blooms I got because that is all I photographed.

Here is a Benary Giant that I have grown in the past.

Hi Loreta,

I got several of my "bum" Zinderellas from Swallowtail.

In the "good old days" Parks Seed had an extensive test garden on the grounds of their facility. They grew samples of many of their seed varieties. The public was invited to visit their test garden. It was sort of like their extension of the All-America trials of new varieties. Apparently, seed companies no longer go to the trouble and expense of growing their own seeds. I doubt that Swallowtail knew that their Zinderellas were as off-type as they were.

I think that Zinderellas must have been originated by a separate wholesale seed company that had their own breeders and their business model was to sell their product to seed companies, who would act merely as retail outlets. In the "good old days" Burpee did their own plant breeding. They had a multi-year contest for customers to send in samples of their whitest marigold seed and after several years of that, they declared a winner, who was awarded a significant cash prize. But they knew their white marigolds were not pure white.

I save seed from only my "best" breeder zinnias, and I severely cull my zinnias. Zinnias are, by their nature, rather variable, and all that cross-pollination I have done has increased their variability many-fold. It remains to be seen whether I ever get any really stable varieties. By increasing the severity of my culling process, I hope that I do. I am having fun. But I do classify hand-picking zinnia seeds as "fun". This was my strangest zinnia seed so far.
Oddly, early on in my hobby, I had some cactus flowered zinnias with "horns" on their seeds. I wish now that I had taken some photographs of those seeds, and established that as a strain. Oh well.

ZM

I was around for some of those good ol' days. It wasn't that long ago, was it? In any case, zinnias have come a long way since then.
Your search for zinnias reminds me of the earlier hellebore breeders who tried so hard to stabilize their results until they started using tissue culture. At least the life cycle is shorter for zinnias. I hope you do stabilize some of your results. I would definitely grow them.

Hi Loretta,

" Your search for zinnias reminds me of the earlier hellebore breeders who tried so hard to stabilize their results until they started using tissue culture. "

It's interesting that you mentioned tissue culture. I think I will do some experiments with zinnia tissue culture this Winter.

ZM

Those results I look forward to seeing! I imagine that isn't typical for zinnias.

ZenMan said:It's interesting that you mentioned tissue culture. I think I will do some experiments with zinnia tissue culture this Winter.
ZM

ZenMan ~ Did you ever start your tissue culture project? Or do you plan for it this winter?

Hi Evelyn,

I have not started my new zinnia tissue culture project yet, although I do plan to start it later, but a few months into 2022. At the present time, I am focusing my attention on improving my techniques for starting and growing zinnias indoors. I do have some materials on-hand for the tissue culture project.
I also have a good pressure cooker.

My previous zinnia tissue culture project ended in complete failure due to the failure of my PPM (Plant Preservative Mixture) because it was not stored refrigerated for several months. These are a couple of dead explants from that fiasco. I have since purchased a new supply of PPM, and it is in my refrigerator. Sadly, the labels on the current product still do not say anything about the product needing to be stored in the refrigerator. But it does need to be refrigerated, and my current supply is.

ZM

Hi ZenMan,

Thank you for your prompt reply in this busy season. Tissue culture looks really complicated. I have been hybridizing irises, and it takes 2 years (or more) to get blooms. I am 80 now and it takes a lot of growing in order to even see what to cull. I started crossing them in 2018.

After reading through your whole thread, it looks like it would be a lot easier, and to be able to see results faster to work with zinnias...and I have to admit, your enthusiasm is contagious.

I wish you every success in your future endeavors as it looks like you are making lots of progress.

Happy Holidays

Evelyn