The Dahlia. 353 



DAHLIA— THE DAHLIA. 



Natural Order, Composite ; Linnaean System, Syngenesia, Superflua. 

 Generic Characters : Involucre, double ; exterior, many-leaved ; interior, 

 eight-parted ; receptacle, flat, chaffy ; flowers of the disk, tubular, her- 

 maphrodite; those of the ray, ligulate, female or neuter; achenium, 

 naked. 



J), crocata. Stem erect, fleshy, hollow, branched in the upper part ; lower 

 leaves bipinnate, or tripinnate ; leaflets ovate, acuminate, obtusely serrate ; 

 achenia linear. — PI. 47. , 



Few flowers are now better known, or more generally culti- 

 vated, than the Dahlia ; but notwithstanding its present popu- 

 larity, its early history is not generally known. The first 

 printed account of the Dahlia is said to be in Hernandez's 

 History of Mexico, published in Madrid, in 1651 ; in which two 

 species are figured, under the name of Acocotli. Both of these 

 are single flowers, and one appears to be D. crocata, and the 

 other D. variabilis or superflua. There was, however, an 

 Italian work on the Natural History of Mexico, published at 

 Rome about the same time, which had not only a single but a 

 double Dahlia figured in it. In both these works the plants 

 are described as having tuberous roots, of a strong and bitter 

 taste; and Hernandez says that the Mexicans used these 

 roots medicinally as a tonic. It is not a little singular, that a 

 plant so showy as the Dahlia, should have remained from this 

 time unnoticed for a period of more than one hundred and thirty 

 years. Yet such was the case ; for the next mention of it is 

 made by M. Menonville, who was sent to Mexico by the 

 French Government, in 1787, to endeavor to steal the cochi- 

 neal insect and plant from the Spaniards. This botanist only 

 saw some Dahlias growing in a garden near Guaxaca, and he 

 describes them as having large aster-like flowers, stems as tall 

 as a man, and leaves like those of the elder. In 1789, D. va- 

 riabilis was discovered in a wild state in Mexico by Baron 

 Humboldt, and sent by him to the Abbe Cavanilles, then Pro- 

 fessor of Botany at Madrid. The Marchioness of Bute was at 

 that time a great patroness of floriculture in England, and 

 Vol. I.— 23. 



