THE FUTUBE OF THE DAHLIA 



IN the Florist for 1855 a writer asked the question 

 Is there a reasonable prospect of the Dahlia's pro- 

 gression ? What would that writer say if he had 

 now to answer his own question ? He wrote at 

 a time when raisers had, by their exclusiveness, 

 almost eliminated Dahlias from public favour and 

 general cultivation. Then raisers aimed at raising 

 and retaining none but flowers of the Show and Fancy 

 type. Everything that failed to come up to their 

 standard of geometrical precision was discarded as 

 worthless. True this was brought about, in its earliest 

 stages at least, through a laudable attempt to extricate 

 the Dahlia from a perfect confusion of forms that 

 prevailed. The revival of Dahlia culture dates from 

 about 1870, when the National Dahlia Society was 

 instituted ; but what has done more than even the 

 National Dahlia Society to popularise the cultivation 

 of Dahlias has been the introduction of the Single, 

 Pompon, and Cactus sections. These have been taken 

 up, and enthusiastically grown by thousands who never 

 fancied the Show and Fancy varieties. It was in 1880 

 that the Single Dahlia was introduced, or rather re-intro- 

 duced into commerce, and in that year also the Cactus 



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