Zinnia pollinating and seed-saving references

Cool, learning stuff about zinnias here!  This year I will net some of the flowers, and those are the ones I'll take seeds from, to avoid random/cross-pollination.


- Net flowers
- Floret must be newly opened that morning

A stigma will remain yelllow and receptive for a week to 10 days, so you have multiple opportunities to get it pollinated. When the Stigmas you have pollinated shrivel and die, they are no longer receptive, but that could mean that your pollination was successful and a seed is developing an embryo inside the seed at the base of the petal.

Remember which zinnias you have pollinated and save seeds from them. I don't depend on my memory, so I attach a label to the stem of the blooms that I pollinate.

it is actually preferable to gather zinnia seeds in the green state. It takes only about three weeks for a zinnia embryo to develop to a matured stage, and the seeds are still green, with the attached petals fully alive and with color at that time. The quicker you gather the seed, the less chance seed-eating birds, like finches, have to eat them. And brown mature seeds in a brown seedhead are susceptible to pre-germination in the head if you have a rainy spell. 

I do my pollination in the morning as the pollen florets open and I use tweezers or forceps to pick the pollen florets and use them as "brushes" to apply the pollen to the stigmas. So there is nothing left for the bees on my breeders. Bees are only interested in pollen florets, and are not the least bit interested in a zinnia bloom that doesn't have any pollen florets remaining.



Excellent detail in these posts, with photos:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4576083/how-to-hybridize-zinnias-it-s-easy

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3272916/are-zinnias-self-pollinating-how-to-produce-more-of-a-new-strain


The same fellow leads this discussion:

https://garden.org/thread/view/34248/It-can-be-fun-to-breed-your-own-zinnias/

https://www.google.ca/search?as_q=+&as_epq=It+can+be+fun+to+breed+your+own+zinnias&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=houzz.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=