ON THE DAHLIA 



the tribe, just as it is to the poppies and the glad- 

 ioli, both of which tribes show a range of colora- 

 tion strikingly similar to that revealed by the 

 dahlias. 



New Forms and Combinations 



My own experiments with the dahlias have 

 largely had to do with flowers of the cactus type. 



I have raised these by the hundred thousand, 

 and have produced some really fine forms that 

 have been introduced by Vaughan, Burpee, and 

 others. The modifications introduced have been 

 numerous, and some of them at least have consti- 

 tuted rather notable improvements, notwithstand- 

 ing the elaborate development of this plant by 

 many earlier workers. 



In the course of my experiments I have endeav- 

 ored to give a new impetus to variation and 

 renewed vitality by hybridizing the cultivated 

 forms with the species imported directly from 

 Mexico. To be sure the dahlias originally in hand 

 are so hybridized — to say nothing of the original 

 tendency to variation — that there is plenty of 

 material for selection in any lot of seedlings. 



Still I have thought that I might gain some new 

 combinations by the use of wild strains, and in 

 this my expectations have been realized. 



One of the faults of the dahlia, even in the best 

 varieties, is that there is a tendency to expose the 



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