ocdgardener,

First, you will need to save all the seeds that you can from your unique deep red Profusion specimen. If you had a whole garden full of them, you would be in a stronger position. But some company might be interested in whatever seeds you can save. The only seed company that I can think of right offhand that in the past has expressed an interest in new varieties from gardeners is Thompson & Morgan. But you might want to send a letter of inquiry to all of the major seed companies, including Parks, Burpee, and others. Good luck.

If you were competent in tissue culture, this would be a good subject for that form of multiplication, because it would let you make an essentially unlimited number of clones of your specimen.

You might want to consider taking cuttings from your zinnia specimen and growing them indoors under fluorescent lights. It is generally thought that zinnias aren't good candidates for propagation by cuttings, but by using Physan 20 (to prevent bacterial rot), a humidity dome, rooting hormone, and fluorescent lights, I have grown many zinnias from cuttings. My success rate with zinnia cuttings has been high -- above 90 percent. The details of growing zinnias from cuttings have been discussed at various times in the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" message threads here in this forum. The various parts of that thread are connected head-to-tail by links, so you can readily click your way back to various previous discussions of zinnia propagation by cuttings.

" I'll try to figure out once again how to post a picture."

First you need to upload your picture to an image hosting service like Photobucket. Then you use HTML here to link to your image. For example, if I type

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/MaineMan/986wides/100_4507.jpg">; then this will appear here.

{{gwi:7002}}
I used an ampersand-semicolon "trick" to keep the first sample HTML from actually showing as the image.

ZM
(Not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

hey zen ...

why would the seed from a rogue seedling come back as her unique colored one????

ken

Ken,

"...why would the seed from a rogue seedling come back as her unique colored one????"

I can think of a couple of possibilities. I guess a short, simple explanation would be that it is a mutation. Also, random crossing by bees could be involved.

Mutations can be caused by many things other than cosmic rays. Zinnia DNA contains a wealth of inactive "fossil" information, some of which can, under the right conditions, become active again. We have very little information about what prehistoric zinnias looked like, if any at all.

Last year I had a mutation that produced a giant weird-looking zinnia that was over 7 inches in diameter. It had huge stigmas three times the length of "normal" zinnia stigmas. I referred to it as my "dinosaur" zinnia.

{{gwi:18602}}
I crossed the dino zinnia with several of my other "breeder" zinnias, and I continue to see interesting results from those crosses.

If OCDgardener's deep red Profusion seedling comes true from its seeds, then I would suspect it is a mutation. If a lot of variability appears in those seedlings, I would suspect bee cross-pollination.

ZM

you misunderstand my question ...

she has a unique color mutation ....

she wants to save that color ...

you suggest the seeds from such will harbor that mutation .... color

my understanding .. as limited as it is.. that the seeds from her unique one.. will NOT come true from its own seed ... perhaps the mutation will flow thru the seed .. but the odds of the unique color flowing thru is low to nil .. correct ???? or is there something weird about zinnia??? .. a higher odds of the color repeating???? .. i guess that is my curiosity .. are zinnia different????

or are you saying i need to expand my genetic theories ...

i like my sons red hair... but he will not necessarily have a child with that red hair ...

ken

Ken,

"...you suggest the seeds from such will harbor that mutation .... color"

I suggest that seeds from the extra dark specimen may harbor that color.

Contrary to popular opinion (and some previous catalog descriptions), the Profusion zinnias are not F1 hybrids. If they were, then they most likely would not come true from seed. (And the seeds would cost a whole lot more.) But the Profusions are actually open-pollinated stable strains, that do come reasonably true from seeds. So there is a chance that this mutant could also come true from seed, depending on whether it is a true mutant, or merely a fortuitous bee hybrid.

If it is a random bee hybrid, and dark because it contains a superposition of pigments from two different Profusion colors, (purple and yellow make a very deep color, because in zinnia petals the color mixing is primarily by subtraction), then the offspring would exhibit the normal wide variation from genetic recombinations. You would need to grow a very large number of seedlings from it to have a likelihood of recovering the original dark color in a few of those seedlings. That's why I suggested Tissue Culture and/or asexual propagation by cuttings. A single zinnia plant just can't produce enough seeds to give you good odds of "de-hybridizing" a heterozygous F1 bee-hybrid phenotype.

But it is possible for true mutations to breed true. For example, if the mutation is a single dominant gene, the seedlings could have a good yield of the dark color.

ZM

Ken,

"i like my sons red hair... but he will not necessarily have a child with that red hair .."

Not necessarily, but it is a matter of "odds", and the chances increase if he marries a redhead.

ZM

But the Profusions are actually open-pollinated stable strains, that do come reasonably true from seeds.

==>>> and that answers my querry .... these particular zinnia are unique.. go figure ... based on your zinnia infatuation .. i figured something other than pure genetics led you to the answer you provided ....

no comment on the boy ... he is 8 ...

ken