Hi Bleu,
" Well, that tiny cosmos' bloom is still there, looking exactly the same as it did when I took the photo on Feb 21. "
Well, your weather in Southern California is enviably mild. It has "warmed up" to
zero degrees here in central east rural Kansas where I am, from negative overnight lows, on the way to a "high" of 15 F later today.
Cosmos blooms probably don't last as long as zinnia blooms, but 11 days or so isn't an awfully long bloom age. My individual zinnia blooms routinely last 30 days or longer. Morning glory blooms are more ephemeral--they rarely last out the day they open. Cosmos blooms last long enough to be qualified as cut flowers. Admittedly, your little Cosmos guys are really
unusual. A lot of my home-hybridized zinnia blooms have forms that aren't available in seed catalog zinnias.
I continue to make crosses between my different zinnia flower forms, in order to get still new forms. If I weren't breeding zinnias, I probably would be breeding cosmos, because cosmos also have an enviable variety of flower forms. I particularly like the "Sea Shells" cosmos, and hope to get zinnias in that flower form.
ZM
