Oooh, good question!

* "Blue Boy" bachelor buttons

* "Crackerjack" marigold

* "Heavenly Blue" morning glory

* Moonflower vine

That's all the heirloom annuals I can think of - though someone will probably post one I didn't know was an heirloom!

I only listed annuals -- ? not sure if you wanted to include perennials too.

Fringed dianthus, any variety. They seed around respectfully, too. Clarkia varieties are good performers for me, too.

Nicotiana Alata
4 o'clocks
Heliopsis helianthoides 'Summer Sun'
Purple Coneflower
Malva Zebrina
Black-eyed Susans
Hyacinthe bean vine
Melampodium Million Gold

Hi perennialfan,

" An heirloom variety is a plant you can collect the seeds from, and the offspring will be the same as the parents. "

An heirloom is also usually an old variety. In fact, oldness might be a requirement to be considered "an heirloom". There are some new introductions that come true from saved seeds and would qualify by your definition. But I understand that you are explicitly eliminating F1 hybrid varieties. I grow and breed zinnias as a hobby and I include heirloom varieties of zinnias in my "gene pool". The California Giants zinnias (also sometimes referred to as "Giants of California") are truly an heirloom variety of zinnias, and they were introduced nearly a hundred years ago. This was one of my California Giants specimens that I took a liking to. You can click on Houzz photo thumbnails to see larger versions of the pictures.

Many of the California Giants zinnias had "scoop-shaped" petals like that one. Those petals are rounded and up-turned and look a bit like little spoons. Because of their interesting petals, I crossed them with other breeder zinnias and, of course, those F1 hybrids could in no way be considered to be heirlooms, even though they had heirloom ancestry. I have been merrily making home-hybrids between home-hybrids and have gotten many definitely "not heirloom" zinnias of my own. I have a penchant for novel shaped zinnia petals, like in this home breeder specimen. It may very well contain some heirloom zinnia "blood" in it.

I have saved seeds from it and other novel breeder zinnias, but even though I produce my own seed stock, they will not be "heirlooms" any time soon. But they will continue to be full of surprises, and my zinnia patch continues to be an interesting place for me.

ZM

I have an heirloom Phlox. It’s been passed on for several generations. It’s pretty but prone to a bit of mildew...but I won’t get rid of it. It has only lighty reseeded and I have it scattered about. It’s followed me to a few houses now.

Top one here

How lovely, Garden Ho! Just beautiful! Love the colors!

:)
Dee

Dee thank you.

Here they are in the other Beds...Love phlox!

ZM, that is really beautiful...and zen. You live up to your name!

Beautiful photo, ZM!

GardenHo, I too love phlox, which begs the questions, why don't I have more of them? I love the flowers, I love the scent, I love them in bouquets. I just never think of them till they are in bloom and then tell myself I must get more.... which I promptly forget to do!

I'm trying to be more organized this year (which reminds me I haven't written in my garden journal for about 5 or 6 weeks...) so I will try making an official list of plants on the computer, instead of on a scrap (or 10) of paper or the back of an envelope, which I then lose, only to find 5 years later with some vaguely-remembered latin name on it....

:)
Dee

ZM you’re too funny! Thank you, and just know that the pic was actually taken at dusk. I personally have never had any luck with night pics as you have to use the flash...although some people have been able to capture outstanding ones.

Your frosted Zinnia is beautiful, what a great shot! With your breeding abilities I would not be surprised if one day you did create a glowing one... please share when you do : )

Dee I can totally relate lol! I just came across a sketched out bed that I had made years ago. I was very surprised to find that I had unknowingly kept that vision...as the bed looks almost identical now! Blows my mind!!

Oh, Phlox envy for sure! I bought so many roses and shrubs this year, that I ran out of plant money. I promptly started propagating mine. Mine isn't nearly as gorgeous as yours! Do you know the varieties of the ones you have? I'm simply drooling!!

Zen, would you consider emailing a high quality version of that zinnia photo? Really, it is beautiful.

Gawd sorry the pink ones are all noids... with the exception of the deep fuchsia which is Nikki. The purple and white in the first picture are of the flame series.

Hi Deanna,

" ...would you consider emailing a high quality version of that zinnia photo? "

How do you intend to use it? If you intend to use the image commercially, I probably shouldn't supply it. But if it is just for your personal use, like making a print, I wouldn't mind.

ZM

Only personal for sure! Even as a screensaver for a large desk a higher quality image would be really helpful.

Thank you GardenHo! I don't have Nikki! I love that color!

Some of my favorite heirloom/OP annuals that haven't been mentioned: Asters, Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), Flax, and Cosmos.

Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho...

:-)

Technically, anything collected (and it's legal if you're a homeowner with no intention to sell) is heirloom. All melampodium, cosmos, salvia, zinna (as ZMan can attest!), many marigold (although they can be a little spotty in terms of viability), ageratum, and so many others breed well in the home garden.

Some personal favorites of mine? Any Cosmos. I have both Cosmos sulphureus and the more-common taller ones. Over the years, I breed the sulfur cosmos more and more of a pure Cadmium Medium red because that's the color I favor. The large ones I just let breed however they want.

Ageratum are a snap. Mine are a mix of whatever I had the first year, but tend toward blue--with the occasional purple one thrown just for fun. Right now, I have six on the windowsills just for winter color in the house, they'll blossom in February for winter color.

Collect one marigold and you collected a whole garden! Same with a zinnia.

And melampodium are so easy they self-sow even up here in Pennsylvania in the more protected parts of my garden. I get enough, most summers, to transplant out even without collecting any.

Hi Deanna,

" Only personal for sure! Even as a screensaver for a large desk a higher quality image would be really helpful. "

I used to live in Maine, in Manchester next to the capital, Augusta. My username was MaineMan. That was a good many years ago.

OK, we will figure out how to send you a larger version without making either of our email addresses public. I think we all deserve more personal privacy than the Internet tends to give us. The National Gardening Association (that's a link to it) has an internal feature called Tree-Mail that lets members communicate with each other without using their "real" email addresses, and that could work for file transfers from me to you if you were a member there. I don't know if Houzz offers us an equivalent service to Tree-Mail. If you aren't already a member of The National Gardening Association, I recommend that you join. It provides a lot for gardeners and it is free. If you are already a member, let me know your member username.

ZM

Hollyhocks, the single kind is another old plant variety that is easy to save seeds from. Not necessarily "heirloom" although they are old, many herbs in the mint family, like lamb's ear, sweet melissa and bergamot are also easy to save the seeds, looks like pepper. Nigella another old plant that is easy to save the seeds in the big pods . . . Petunias and old geraniums also easy to grow and save seeds, but only varieties that are not sterile. Coreopisis also easy, again if fertile. Goldenrod, if you're into that . . . asters, zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, although only some breed true nice color and form as mentioned. Poppies dead easy too. The annual ones are very pretty but peter out shortly. You can also save some snapdragons, again the older varieties. Some even smell nice . . .

ZM, excuse me for disappearing for a while. Hello, former Mainers! (I'm not actually allowed to call myself a Mainer, since I'm a PFA, but I'll sneak one in there.) If you go to my Houzz profile page (I think you can just click on my name) you're supposed to be able to send me a private message by clicking on the "Message" link on the right hand side of my name banner thingy. I enabled Message so people could send me things through email without having to publish my personal email address. Let me know if that does or doesn't work,, and THANK YOU!

GardenHo, love your phlox. My mother always had so many and I have nary a one. I hope this spring I can add a bed to the only part of the yard that really gets sun, but it is a difficult spot to clear and tend. Sigh. I may end up living vicariously through you!

Hi Deanna,

I am commenting here in case someone else might "chime in" with something helpful.

I went to your Houzz profile page. Like you said, just clicking on your name here gets you there.

I left you a message there. Clicking on the Share box writes the following to your Clipboard:

http://www.houzz.com/user/deannatoby

That does not "work" as an email address. so I am wondering how writing that line to my Clipboard is supposed to help with anything. I have a largish JPEG of the frosty zinnia that runs a little over 6 kb. As I recall, it is 3000 pixels wide. Is that as large as you need, or do you want something with higher pixel dimensions? I am going to try that Clipboard thingy as a web address and see where it gets me. OK, it also gets me to your Houzz profile page. I guess our Profile Pages are just as "public" as our messages here. I don't see a place on your Profile Page where I could just Paste the big JPEG. As I recall, we are attempting to send it to just you and not to the world in general.

ZM

I just sent you a response through Houzz with my email address. The photo didn't come through, but thank you for trying!

Hello Deanna,

I received your message via Houzz. I could respond to your email address that you provided in that message with an email to you in which I attached a large version of the frosty zinnia photo, but of course I would be giving you my email address if I did that, and I have a thing about keeping personal email addresses private as much as possible. I assure you I will respect the privacy of your email address, but you shouldn't have to depend on the honesty (or kindness) of strangers to respect your email address.

I haven't thought of a good way to transmit a large photo to you as an email attachment without disclosing my email address. I may choose to do that, trusting that you won't spread my email address around, but in the meantime I will try a compromise experiment, and attach a larger version of the photo here. That will be an experiment, because I have no idea what the size limitations on attached photos is here on Houzz. I could produce a much larger higher quality version of the photo than this experimental attachment. So this is an acceptable compromise for me if it works, and it could at least be an improvement over what is currently available to you.

So the present plan is that I will upload the larger compromise version here, as usual it will appear as a Houzz thumbnail, which you can click on to see the larger version. And you can hopefully capture the larger version for your use. (And so can everyone else.) This may "break" something, so there is always the chance of that, in which case Houzz can inform us what the maximum size can be for an uploaded photo. So here goes.

Now it remains to be seen how big the clicked on version gets. Fingers crossed.

OK, that's a Fail. I have now discovered that I can't right-click on a full-sized Houzz photo here to get a downloadable file. That is a good feature of Houzz, because you can "lift" photos from many websites. (You can right-click to copy the Houzz thumbnails, but they are just highly reduced versions of the uploaded much larger originals.) I noticed that this larger version is actually a lower quality picture than the smaller one in the original posting, but this larger version was just a working version. This requires some more thought.

ZM