THE DAHLIA. 187 



The dahlia is propagated by cuttings or divisions. The latter 

 method may be carried out at any time from lifting to planting ; 

 it consists simply in cutting the old root into pieces, leaving one 

 or more " eyes " on each. 



If it is intended to propagate by cuttings, the roots from which 

 the slips are to be taken should be potted and put into a warm 

 greenhouse in the first part of February. When the shoots are 

 about two inches long they should be cut off just below a pair of 

 leaves, the buds in the axils of which will form the eyes of the 

 tubers which the cutting is to develop. If the cuttings be taken 

 with a long piece of stem below the leaves they will root and 

 form tubers, but these will never grow after the first year for they 

 will have no buds at their crowns. 



The cuttings are rooted in sand in the ordinary way, and may 

 be planted out when the weather becomes warm enough. It 

 sometimes happens that a cutting has a hollow stem ; without 

 special treatment this will never root, but if it be split up to the 

 leaves, and one of the halves cut away the cutting will root with- 

 out much trouble. 



New varieties must be raised from seed, for the dahlia rarely 

 sports, though it sometimes does so. I have never seen more than 

 one instance ; in that one several tubers of Emma Cheney, a very 

 large rosy colored sort produced mahogany brown flowers and 

 have continued to do so. It is said -that the plump seed is of 

 little value but that the thin ones are more apt to produce fine 

 flowers. I have not found that there is any such difference. 

 Whatever seed you use you will not get more than one flower 

 worth saving out of a thousand seedlings. Seed is readily 

 obtained ; if you pull off one of the dead dry heads left where a 

 blossom withered, you will find the thin black seeds among the 

 chaffy bracts ; these should be planted out of doors where the 

 plants are to remain, as soon as the ground is warm enough. If 

 these plants are taken care of and given room enough they will 

 probably blossom in September. 



We are commonly advised to sow the seed under glass in 

 March, but those who do so will be sorry before the end of May, 

 for the seed starts so readily and the young plants grow so freely 

 that the hasty gardener soon has to choose whether he will throw 

 away some of his dahlias or some of his other plants. 



In the dahlia as we now have it the tendenc}' to variation is 

 pretty thoroughly fixed. Out of two hundred seedlings raised 



