Addisonia 53 



(Plate 219) 

 DAHLIA "MME. J. COISSARD " 



" Mme. J. Coissard " Dahlia 



Garden Hybrid 

 Family Carduacea© Thisti^e Family 



The present variety is usually a good representative of the group 

 of dahhas known in America as the "duplex" class, though in its 

 simpler flower-heads it rarely approaches the "single" type and in 

 its more double conditions it is occasionally not far removed from 

 the peony-flowered group. The American Dahlia Society defines 

 the "duplex" class as having "semi-double flowers, with center 

 almost exposed on opening of bud, with rays in more than one row, 

 more than twelve, long and flat, or broad and rounded, not notice- 

 ably twisted or curled." The group intergrades with the "single" 

 and "peony-flowered" classes, and as yet it has gained recognition 

 in only a few of the American catalogues, most of the varieties 

 properly belonging here being still included in the "peony-flowered" 

 group. Although nearly all of the botanical species of dahlias, as 

 originally described, have been credited with "single" flower-heads, 

 yet the beginnings of the "doubling" process, constituting the 

 modern "duplex" type, had a very early origin and the description 

 and figures of Dahlia pinnata Cav., the first member of this genus 

 to receive a Latin name (Cavanilles, Icones et Descriptiones Plan- 

 tarum 1 : 57. pi. 80. 1791), were based upon plants which showed no 

 single flowers but did bear flower-heads of the "duplex" character. 

 And if the two rather crude figures of the native Mexican acocotli, 

 published by Hernandez in 1651 in his "Nova plantarum, anima- 

 lium, et mineralium Mexicanorum historia," are indeed figures of 

 dahlias, as they are generally believed with good reason to be, the 

 "duplex" type was found in the mountains of Mexico upwards of 

 three centuries ago. 



The credit of introducing the variety "Mme. J. Coissard" is 

 commonly assigned by French horticulturists to Voraz of Lyon, 

 but it seems to have been named for the wife of a private gardener 

 in Lyon who was probably the real originator. Its introduction is 

 sometimes credited also to Andr6 Charmet of Monplaisir, Lyon, 

 who appears to have been its chief distributor. In September, 

 1911, a Gold Medal of the National Dahlia Society of Great Britain 



