ZenMan said:
I grow zinnias and breed them as a fun hobby. Zinnias are normally pollinated by one species or another of bees. The bees do not intend to do pollination, their intent is to gather nectar or pollen (liquid and solid food for them) and some pollination can occur by accident. But bees are not at all efficient at pollinating zinnias. Just planting two zinnia plants next to each other is an unreliable way to hybridize them.
I recommend that you "be the bee" and do the pollination yourself. The male and female parts of a zinnia flower are relatively easy to access, so you can do a much better job than the bees, because they don't have a clue about pollination, and you can know exactly what is going on.
The male parts of a zinnia flower are the pollen florets, which produce pollen in the morning. The pollen florets are fuzzy yellow starfish shaped organs. The female parts of zinnia flower are the stigmas. They are thin yellow Y-shaped organs at the base of each petal. The Pollen Florets and Stigmas are annotated in this picture of a zinnia bloom.
You probably already know that you can see a larger version of the pictures in All Things Plants by just clicking on them. And you can make that picture a bit larger still by hitting your F11 key to temporarily remove your browser's heading material. Hit the F11 key again to restore your browser's headings. Scroll to the lower right-hand corner of the big picture to click on the little arrow to close the big picture and be back here.
You can cross pollinate two different zinnias by transferring pollen from the Pollen Florets of one bloom onto the Stigmas of another bloom. Or, if you want to self a zinnia bloom, you can distribute its pollen over its stigmas. By transferring the pollen yourself, you can get very high seed yields. Incidentally, the unused pollen florets can form a selfed "floret seed" at their base. The florets seeds look different from the petal seeds. You can transfer the pollen with an artists brush, or by picking the floret with tweezers or forceps and using the pollen floret itself as a brush to apply pollen to stigmas.
There are many, many kinds and colors of zinnias that exist, and an almost astronomical number of different crosses that you can make between them. Hopefully you can find sources of different zinnias available in Israel. Some combine two or more colors on each petal, like these examples.
- Zinnia 'Whirligig'
- Uploaded by ZenMan
- Zinnia 'Zig Zag'
- Uploaded by ZenMan
- Zinnia 'Whirligig'
- Uploaded by ZenMan
If you have questions about any of this, feel free to ask.
ZM
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