Zinnia opening up

I have some zinnias in small beds along the fencepost at the garden. I took a series of photos showing all the way from a bud to a fully open flower

Its kind of like faux time laspe 😆 all the pictures were taken at the same time. The zinnia plants have flowers in all stages of opening right now. The buds look interesting almost like armored. Like an armadillos or something.

This one is just starting to open up.

Here's one a little further along.

Next the petals start opening up.

Zinnias have several layers of petals that open up one at a time.

Once they are fully open they have small yellow "flowers" in the middle. These are called disk florets and are the part of the flower that produces pollen.

If you look closely at the first photo of the bud, it foreshadows this last shot. I also have morning glories growing in these beds. The morning glories grow vines and the vines grab and climb anything within reach. A morning glory vine has this zinnia in a stranglehold 😲 I usually train the morning glory vines back to the fence and off the other flowers but they are sneaky lol