Addisonia 49 



(Plate 217) 

 DAHLIA "DAHLIADEL CENTURY" Lm>^..> 



" Dahliadel Century " Dahlia 



Garden Hybrid (lA*ro{5>! 



Family Carduacbab Thistle Family 



This is a good representative of the so-called "single" dahlias, 

 the type that comes the nearest to representing most of the native 

 dahlias, as they occur in the mountains of Mexico, Central America, 

 and northern South America. In the native state, however, the 

 prevailing colors would appear to be shades of red, pink, scarlet, 

 purple, yellow and orange. According to the definition adopted by 

 the American Dahlia Society, the heads or "flowers" of single 

 dahlias have large open centers and from eight to twelve floral rays 

 (usually eight) arranged more or less in a single series. 



It would appear that in 1789 Vicente Cervantes, who was asso- 

 ciated with Martin Sess^, the director of the botanic garden in the 

 City of Mexico, sent dahlia seeds to the Abb^ Cavanilles, director 

 of the Royal Gardens in Madrid, and that those seeds, so far as is 

 known, were the beginnings of the cultivated dahlias of Europe and 

 of the United States. In 1791 Cavanilles gave the technical botani- 

 cal name Dahlia pinnata to the species, or at least to one of the 

 individual plants derived from those Mexican seeds, the name 

 Dahlia being in honor of Andreas Dahl, a well-known Swedish 

 botanist. Three years later he named two more forms, or species 

 as he considered them to be, calling one Dahlia rosea and the other 

 Dahlia coccinea. The first. Dahlia pinnata, had a semi-double 

 "flower" or head; the other two were single-flowered. But so 

 many sports, forms, varieties, or hybrids appeared within the next 

 few years that later botanists were inclined to welcome the specific 

 name variabilis proposed by Willdenow in 1809, under the generic 

 name Georgina, a synonym of Dahlia. The original specific name, 

 pinnata, though long considered a synonym of variabilis, should be 

 restored, according to all of the prevalent codes of nomenclature. 

 Although the first-described forms of dahlias had single or semi- 

 double flowers, varieties with fully double flowers finally appeared 

 and these became increasingly popular. By 1826 there were sixty 

 varieties under cultivation in England by the Royal Horticultural 

 Society and in 1841 an English grower is said to have possessed 



