Zinnia elegans
Zinnias were one of the first flowers that I grew for the roadside farm market. This annual flower comes in all sizes and lots of colors and is very easy to start from seed (i.e., you don't need bifocals to see the seeds, or tweezers to pick them up and place them in the soil). And, best of all, they just seem to want to grow! They also have a long vase life.
Over the years I've grown several kinds of zinnias, but never one with the brilliant color combination of the 'Zowie.' What a great name! It was a 2006 AAS Winner (All America Selection) which is a very good recommendation to have. This organization, formed in 1932, has the following mission statement: "To promote new garden seed varieties with superior garden performance judged in impartial trials in North America."
The 3-5 inch bloom has several layers of bright petals surrounding a big, central red and yellow cone. When the petals, open they're magenta-pink with yellow tips, and the pink gradually turns to rich red. Best of all, the more you cut, the more you get ... new buds form all summer. I'm hoping they will make a bouquet that dazzles the eye!
Zinnias were originally found in a grassland area that stretched from southwest America to South America, but mostly in Mexico. The genus name comes from a German anatomist and botanist named Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-59) - gotta be German with a name like that! Apparently, in 1750, the German Ambassador to Mexico sent him some seeds of a plant which was considered a weed in Mexico. In his honor, the plant was named Zinnia, which is an "eponym" ... a word derived from the name of a person. (No extra charge for the vocabulary word of the week!)
Zinnias were one of the first flowers that I grew for the roadside farm market. This annual flower comes in all sizes and lots of colors and is very easy to start from seed (i.e., you don't need bifocals to see the seeds, or tweezers to pick them up and place them in the soil). And, best of all, they just seem to want to grow! They also have a long vase life.
Over the years I've grown several kinds of zinnias, but never one with the brilliant color combination of the 'Zowie.' What a great name! It was a 2006 AAS Winner (All America Selection) which is a very good recommendation to have. This organization, formed in 1932, has the following mission statement: "To promote new garden seed varieties with superior garden performance judged in impartial trials in North America."
Zinnias were originally found in a grassland area that stretched from southwest America to South America, but mostly in Mexico. The genus name comes from a German anatomist and botanist named Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-59) - gotta be German with a name like that! Apparently, in 1750, the German Ambassador to Mexico sent him some seeds of a plant which was considered a weed in Mexico. In his honor, the plant was named Zinnia, which is an "eponym" ... a word derived from the name of a person. (No extra charge for the vocabulary word of the week!)
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