Tas. 7655. 
DAHLIA MAXIMILIANA. 
Native of Mezxico. 
Nat. Ord. Composit2.—Tribe HELIANTHOIDER. 
Genus Dautia, Cav.; (Benth. & Hook. f. Gen. Plant. vol. ii. p. 386.) 
Danita Mazimiliana; elata, ramosa, caule fistuloso? lenticellato, foliis 
plerisque bipinnatis superioribus pinnatis v. 3-foliolatis, summis interdum 
unifoliolatis, petiolo gracili inferioram fistuloso, foliolis paucis 3-5-poll. 
longis sessilibus v. graciliter petiolulatis ovatis ovato-oblongisve acutis 
acuminatis caudatisve grosse serratis basi acutis obtusis v. repente 
angustatis et in petiolulam decurrentibus glabris v. utrinque puberulis, 
terminali paullo majore oblongo sessili v. (interdum longe) petiolulato, 
floribus in axillis superioribus solitariis et ad apices ramuJorum sub- 
corymbosis, pedunculis elongatis gracilibus, capitulis ad 3-poll. latis, 
involucri bracteis exterioribus 5-7 herbaceis lineari-oblongis patentibus 
tortis 3-nerviis basi tumidis, interioribus erectis oblongis snbmembrana- 
ceis obtusis acutisve, fl. radii ad 8 tubo brevi puberulo, limbo elliptico 
obtuso multinervi roseo-purpureo, disci floribus aurantiacis. 
D. Maximiliana, Hort. in Gard. Chron, 1879, vol. i. p. 216; Hemsl. in Gard. 
Chron. 1879, vol. ii. p. 525, et Biolog. Cent. Am, Bot. vol. ii. p. 197. 
The earliest notice which I find of this plant is that 
specimens of it were exhibited at a show of the Royal 
Horticultural Society in February, 1879, by Mr. Green, 
gardener to Sir George Macleay, K.C.M.G., of Pendel 
Court, Bletchingly. There are excellent specimens, com- 
municated by Sir George, preserved in the Herbarium 
at Kew. As stated in the Gardener’s Chronicle of that 
date, it attains eight feet in height, four feet in diameter, 
and blooms for a long-time. This was followed by Mr. 
Hemsley’s notice of the plant as D. Mawimiliana, Hort., 
in October of the same year, in his account of the 
known species of Dahlia, with the observations that the 
stem, seven feet high, is lenticellate, the leaves bipin- 
nate, with relatively slender petioles, and the flowers 
unknown. In December of the following year I received 
some flowers of it as D. Mawzimiliana?, from EK. H. 
Woodall, Esq., of St. Nicholas House, Scarborough, with 
the information that the plant producing them was eight 
feet high, had excited great admiration, from the delica 
mauve colour of its anemone-like flowers, and that, as 
May lst, 1899, . 
