HISTOEY OF THE DAHLIA 



DAHLIA VARIABILIS, a very variable species, hence 

 its name, is the one commonly believed to have been 

 the first introduced to this country. It is .a native 

 of Mexico and Central America. It received its 

 generic name after Dr. Dahl, a Swedish botanist and 

 pupil of Linmeus. A competing name, "Georgina," ran 

 "Dahlia" a race for some time; and so late as 1832 

 it can be found in an Index to London's Gardeners' 

 Magazine. 



The earliest known description of the Dahlia is 

 that of Francesco Hernandez, physician to Philip II. of 

 Spain, who wrote four books on the plants and animals 

 of New Spain ; and in one of these books appears an 

 illustration of I), variabilis. Then for a space of 130 

 years the Dahlia seems to have been lost to writers 

 until 1787, when a Frenchman, one Nicholas Joseph 

 Thierry de Menonville, was sent to America to secure 

 the cochineal insect, and in that year published a 

 treatise in which he described the Dahlias he had 

 seen in a garden near Guaxaca, " In the year 

 1789, Vincentes Cervantes, director of the Botanic 

 Garden at Mexico, forwarded seeds of the Dahlia to 

 the Koyal Gardens at Madrid, then under the direc- 

 tion of Abbe Cavanilles. The Marquis of Bute was- 



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