Composite Dah lia. 



237 



reintroduced till early in the present century. Little care, 

 however, seems to have been bestowed upon them even then, 

 for, until 1814, when some more plants were imported from 

 France, we read of no progress having been made in raising 

 new varieties. It was first introduced into France about the 

 year 1800 and cultivated for its tubers ; but it was not des- 

 tined to become famous for economical produce. Soon, how- 

 ever, it engaged the attention of numerous horticulturists, and 

 founded its reputation as an ornamental plant of the first 



Pig. 126. Dahlia variabilis. ( nat. size.) 



order. In the wild state the central or disk florets are 

 small, tubular and yellow, and the marginal or ray-florets only 

 conspicuous and highly coloured in some shade of scarlet. But 

 every successive sowing brought forth new variations in colour, 

 and gradually the disk-florets were metamorphosed, assuming 

 the same shape and colour as the outer ones, until at length 

 the ' perfect flower ' of florists was attained, in which all the 

 florets are similar, forming an almost spherical head, erro- 

 neously termed a double flower (fig. 1 26). The Dahlia indeed 



