Rose history choices: I still have the monster Alba SemiPlena that I planted next to the Apothecary's Rose, long removed since ASP was trying to eat it alive. I think those are the roses of York/Lancaster War Fame. In which case the victorious white rose is fitting, if I have my Tudor dynastic history right, but it has been a while. Personal history - I have a piece of a rugosa hybrid that survived all the rose cane borer tragedy a few years ago. We all think it is probably Hansa, introduced in the early 1900's. The original for me came from a sucker in my mother's back yard, and hers came from the door yard at my father's parents' farm. Town records first mention the farm in my grandfather's name in 1915, when my dad was 2. My dad's older siblings all describe the rose being there as far back as they could remember. My grandmother had very few ornamentals - her annual effort was to plant petunias in the holes of concrete blocks lining the edge of the sidewalk. There was a mock orange bush, a lilac by the hencoop, and that rose bush. Nothing else "for pretty". She had a good friend, a farmwife up the road, that I remember visiting with her, and that woman had her homemade lawn chairs - benches really - in the middle of a riotous backyard of flowers. I like to think that my grandmother's rose might have been a gift from that neighbor. My grandparents were two of a community of truck gardeners who supplied the Springfield Mass area until post WW II interstates and children who didn't want to farm ended it. So it was a pretty intense plant-focused area, with several of the families now in the fourth generation who are focusing on a few types of produce (vineripened tomatoes, fresh corn, pickyour own berry operations)and mostly ornamental horticulture. Most of them are married to people with "real jobs" that bring benefits and cash flow... Anyway, back to the rose - I was devastated when I thought I had lost it five years ago. My original sucker, planted in 1987, had become a thicket, from which I had moved just one sucker that sprung up in the grass and looked just too confident to mow over. That baby was tucked in by the giant Alba, next to a chunk of granite that marked the edge of the driveway, where it was forgotten. You know where this is going - yup, the giant thicket of rugosa dead and gone. But the year after the Cane Borer Scourge was a memory, and I had cut down and removed all the evidence from the thicket as well as several other rugosa hybrid victims, guess who came peeking up - from the other side of the granite! Yup. It is growing kind of weirdly sideways, but has blossomed for the last two years. So I am waiting for the first strong sucker over there, and I am going to give it a Prime Spot by my back door. Gotta love those rugosas.

Hi Alex, " I'd already seen the listing for that book with a rather steep price tag attached to it, even used. ...I think I'll hold off and see if it comes to us on its own at the bookshop or on a housecall. " The prices for that book vary all over the map, and some offerings on Amazon are far greater than its MSRP !!! When I first saw the book listed on Amazon, its price was in the neighborhood of $200 ! I could tell from Amazon's Look Inside feature in the Table of Contents that its Chapter 12 was devoted to zinnias, but as I recall I couldn't access any of Chapter 12 online. I didn't even know about Google access at that time. I didn't know of any other significant available information on zinnia breeding, so I really wanted the book. Then Amazon ran some kind of sale, and I purchased the paperback version new from Amazon Prime in January 2008 for $96.70. With your contacts in the bookstore world you might find access to a new or used copy at a price acceptable to you, hopefully less than $100. I have found the book quite helpful. Apparently I should re-read it more carefully, because I completely missed its relevant info about your zinnia pollination question that fortunately Joseph called our attention to. " ...you're still planting? " I finished the prep work and planting of my last seedbed day before yesterday. I will still fill in a few blank places with seeds for the next couple of weeks. In the past I have planted zinnias as late as in August for a Fall crop, but I won't do that this year. ZM

I also collect a few here and there, myself ;) After my pot-jumpers began growing I couldn't help but eye up the other orphaned leaves lying about in the store... (weird - I thought I'd already responded to this thread above, but my comment is not here) i wish you luck with the nodulosa! I rescued a dish garden with a severed nodulosa, as I've coveted this Echeveria for some time, but never see it for sale. I have four fallen nodulosa leaves propagating, all of which have roots, but after several weeks still no buds. The severed head is rooted and growing now (yay!) but the stem section that had air roots hasn't sprouted anything yet either.

How pretty! Definitely eye candy for those of us entering the colder months of the year. We've had snow already. I have peduncles that developed on my Hoya carnosa and on my shepherdii. They would always dry up when they would develop before, but I've been misting them on a daily basis so the vines wouldn't shrivel up like they have done in the past. Hoping for flowers come spring. Brad AKA Moonwolf