Hello all,

I have been growing zinnias for several years, saving seeds from my favorites, and even hybridizing them myself. Actually, hybridizing zinnias is surprisingly easy. That evolved into my current hobby of breeding zinnias.

In 2011, I was inspecting my patch of Zig Zag zinnias when I saw something strange (Zig Zags are now discontinued, but they were somewhat similar to Whirligigs). It was a zinnia with rather small red blooms, but the petals were composed of narrow tubes, reminiscent of soda straws. I took pictures of it.





The blooms were only a little over an inch in diameter, but I was excited about the unique flower form. So I put a small tomato cage around the plant to protect it, and started crossing it with other larger zinnias that I had in my main zinnia garden. I designated it by the codename E2 in my garden journal of breeder zinnias.

Every morning I would gather pollen florets from E2 and take them to other zinnias to apply the pollen. I saved seeds from those zinnias and the next year, 2012, I grew a lot of the seeds from those crosses, hoping to see some interesting tubular-petaled hybrids. I was surprised and disappointed when no tubular-petaled zinnias appeared in those F1 hybrids.

When I was shucking zinnia seedheads that Winter, it suddenly occurred to me that the tubular petaled trait must simply be recessive, and that I had a lot of tubular petaled genes in the F2 seeds I was packaging for planting the following year.

In 2013, the first few blooms from that F2 generation were not tubular petaled and I was worried. But on about the third day of new blooms there were two or three tubular petaled blooms. And that was just the beginning. For the next month new versions of the tubular petaled trait continued to appear.

The tubular petaled genes had combined with the genes of my other zinnias in the non-tubular F1 hybrids and recombined in the F2 generation to produce some tubular blooms several different ways, including bigger blooms, different colors, and some variations in the tubular petals themselves. There were enough different versions of the tubular petals that it seemed very likely that more than one gene was determining the form of the recombinant tubular blooms.

I will show some pictures of the tubular petaled recombinant zinnias in some of the next few messages. More later.

ZM

I was pleased that the tubular recombinants were appearing in several different colors.







We have some weather coming in and my HughesNet satellite uplink/downlink communication is becoming flakey. I will add some more pictures tomorrow. More later.

ZM

Welcome to ATP ZenMan!

Those are some awesome looking Zinnias! When I first saw your pictures before I read your post I thought the flowers were a mutation of the Cactus Zinnia.

Well done!

I love those flowers!

Hi Xeramtheum,

It's possible the tubular "mutant" is related to the Cactus zinnias in some way. I speak of my original tubular as a mutant, and that was my first opinion, that the mutation had occurred in my garden. I have since come to believe that that red tubular zinnia is actually an existing strain of zinnias, that may have been around for many years or possibly even many decades. I think it may have been "flying under the radar" in zinnia seed fields.

I know of one instance on another forum in which a person posted a picture of a favorite red zinnia and, in the background and only a little out of focus, was an easily recognizable tubular red zinnia, perhaps a bigger specimen than mine. I mentioned that to the poster of the picture and the poster expressed surprise, and the intent to look to see if the zinnia was still there. I never heard the outcome of that. I think a lot of tubular zinnias get ignored or pulled up as "off type". That's not too surprising, because they are rather small and un-showy. My interest in them was based on their potential to become something good when bred with other zinnias. And they have done that, by providing the genes to help produce a new flower form in the zinnias in my garden.







This little grasshopper is "inspecting" a tubular petaled zinnia.



Some of the tubular petaled zinnias are a bit on the weird side.



While others have "hands" and seem to be waving at us.



I have enjoyed growing a variety of tubular petaled zinnias this year, and I will probably grow even more of them next year. As a strain, they need more colors and bigger flowers, and I can't wait to make that happen.

ZM

Hi lovemyhouse,

I'm glad you like my tubular petaled zinnias. I grow a lot of different kinds of zinnias, but working with the tubular petaled zinnias began a new phase in my zinnia breeding. The tubular petals are a kind of enigma, because their stigmas (the part of a zinnia that accepts pollen to fertilize its egg cell) are enclosed in an inaccessible tube, and it is a wonder how they can produce many seeds that way.



I was doing some pollination on this next tubular petaled zinnia just yesterday.



It has a kind of "frosted" look due to the lighter color on the petal ends. When I need to make the tubular petaled stigmas accessible, I use an X-Acto knife with a small blade. It's a bit tedious, but it leads to some interesting results in the zinnia patch.

ZM

Sure hope you can get to a point they are commercially viable, would get them in a heartbeat.

Hi lovemyhouse,

Thanks for the vote of confidence. It will probably be several years before any of my strains are commercially viable, but in the meantime I am really enjoying working on them. Growing, culling, selecting breeders, selfing and cross-pollinating them, saving seeds, and even growing some of them indoors during the Winter. For me, zinnias are a kind of year round hobby. And the challenging thing is that there is always more to learn about the hobby. And working with new flower forms, like the tubular petaled zinnias, adds interest to the hobby.



Sometimes I choose to cull a tubular petaled zinnia, because I grow a lot of them, and want to improve the breed by saving seed from only the best examples. I think this one was a cull.



These next two were kind of borderline, but I decided to keep them.





That last one reminded me of one of those sea anemone creatures that catch little fish with their tentacles. Some of the tubular petaled zinnias have flowers that aren't very round, and are distinctly asymmetrical.





That last one is almost triangle shaped. Since the petals of a zinnia are botanically considered to be "flowers" by virtue of being able to produce a seed, I am working toward making the petals look more like flowers. And a bunch of "petal flowers" needn't be arranged in a perfect circle. So I don't mind it when the tubular petaled zinnias have blooms that aren't symmetrical. Although most of them are reasonably symmetrical.

ZM

You might try crossing them with Cactus Zinnias. Have you grown out the F2 and F3's? Are they stable?

I rather like the unexpected nature of the asymmetrical ones.

Hi Xeramtheum,

I have crossed and continue to cross tubulars with both cactus flowered zinnias and some of my larger flowered hybrids, such as my aster flowered zinnias. At this time I have grown F2, F1xF1, F2xF1, F2xF2, and F3 seeds and, although I get significant yields of different versions of the tubular petaled zinnias, they are far from what I would call a stable strain. That may take years, particularly if I keep crossing stuff, but I can create a patch of tubular zinnias by simply planting recombinant seeds and culling out the non-tubular specimens.

My zinnia goals tend to be a "moving target", not so much because I change my mind about what I like, but because the zinnias themselves continually present me with new opportunities.

For example, last year I found a new mutant, which I call the Star-Tipped Mutant, and I crossed it with representative specimens of many of my ongoing projects, including the tubular petaled strain, and that cross opened up some significant improvements in the tubular strain.

I will continue to develop the "regular" tubular petaled zinnias, like I have shown samples of here. However, the Star-Tipped Mutant cross yielded tubulars with nice "toothy" petal ends. So I will be developing that strain as well. But right now, nothing much is as "stable" as you would hope that a commercial zinnia strain would be. (Although, many commercial strains have a stability problem as well.)

I will expound upon my encounter with the Star-Tipped Mutant zinnia in a new message thread in a day or two. I am almost relieved that I didn't find a new mutant zinnia so far this year. Things are already way too exciting in my zinnia garden.

ZM

Well, it is exciting from this side, that's for sure.

Would you post a link to the new thread here when you start it? That way it won't be missed. I'd like to follow your progress.

Lol, I cross Morning Glory's and have just started this year crossing Tropical Hibiscus. In my experience with MG's, F1 is usually a good mixture of both parents, F2 starts to get creative with the odd gene, F3 is anything goes and F4 they start to settle down.

I know exactly what you man about new mutants and breathing a sign of relief.

Hi Xeramtheum,

I considered breeding Morning Glories, but the warm colors seemed to be mostly missing. Theoretically there is a yellow species, but it doesn't seem to have been exploited to widen the morning glory color spectrum to something comparable to zinnias.

I stumbled across Hidden Valley Hibiscus when searching for the Bug Blaster http://www.hiddenvalleynaturea...
hose-end water sprayer. I haven't bought one yet, but I still may. Hidden Valley Hibiscus has some amazing hybrids. If I weren't so busy with my zinnias, I might consider Tropical Hibiscus as a hobby.

I agree with your characterizations of F1, F2, F3, and F4. Now all I expect of the F1 plants is confirmation that I got the cross. I look forward to the recombinations of genes that occur in the F2 generations and beyond, which is where I make my main grow-outs.

ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

I am currently growing some zinnias indoors in order to get in a couple of extra generations of zinnia breeding before next Spring. This is one of my current tubular zinnias that I like, for several reasons. One reason is that it has extra narrow tubes, and a bright yellow inside the tubes and a strangely colored outside of the tubes.



Another reason I like it is that it reminds me of a fireworks skyburst. I am crossing it with several other indoor breeder zinnias.

ZM

Are the petals long ? they look to be about an inch.
I dont know jack about hybridizing. But it must be thrilling to see new experiments bloom.

Unique, can see the skyburst resemblance.

ge1836 said:Are the petals long ? they look to be about an inch.
I dont know jack about hybridizing. But it must be thrilling to see new experiments bloom.

The bloom is bigger than it looks in that photo. The tubular petals are nearly two inches long and the bloom is almost 4 inches in diameter. I have been crossing these tubular petaled zinnias with larger zinnias in an attempt to make them larger, and that has been working fairly well. The original tubular petaled mutant did have tubes about an inch long with blooms 1.5 to 1.75 inch in diameter. Its petals were bright red inside and dull red outside. My goal is to get these tubular petaled things 6 inches across or larger. This one was significantly larger than the one in that last picture.



However, it did not have the bright yellow tube interiors, so it didn't have as much of a fireworks starburst effect. There are many kinds of zinnias, and I will be experimenting with crossing these tubular petaled zinnias with many of them. It's fun to cross various kinds of zinnias with each other. And even more fun to cross the crosses with each other. It's amazing the stuff you can get.

ZM

Great luck to you.