THE 
LADIES’ FLOWER-GARDEN 
OF 
CHAPTER I. — COMPOSITiE {continued). 
GENUS XII. 
DAHLIA, Cav. THE DAHLIA. 
Lin. Syst. SYNGENESIA SUPERFLUA. 
Generic Character. — Involucre double ; exterior many-leaved ; interior eight-parted. Receptacle flat, chaffy. Flowers of the disk tubular, 
hermaphrodite ; those of the ray ligulate, female or neuter. Achenium naked. 
Description, &c. — Few flowers are now better known, or more generally cultivated, than the Dahlia ; but, 
notwithstanding its present popularity, 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. mriabilis or superjlua. 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, under 
the truly Mexican-sounding name of Cocoxochitl. In both works the plants are described as having tuberous 
roots, which have a strong and bitter taste ; and Plernandez says that the Mexicans used these roots medicinally 
as a tonic. The next notice of the plant was by M. Thiery Menonville, who was sent to Mexico in 1 787 hy the 
French government to endeavour to steal the cochineal insect and its 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 
double flowers, stems as tall as a man, and leaves like those of the elder. In 1789, D. variahilis was discovered 
in a wild state in Mexico by Baron Humboldt, and sent by him to the Abbe Cavanilles, then Professor of Botany 
of the Botanic Garden at Madrid. The Marchioness of Bute was at that time a great patroness of floriculture in 
England, and being in correspondence with the Professors at the different botanic gardens in Europe, Cavanilles 
sent her some of the seeds the same year that he received them. One of the seedlings raised by Cavanilles 
produced semi-double flowers in October 1790, and a figure of it was published in the following January in 
Cavanilles’ leones Plantarum, in which the genus was named Dahlia, in honour of Andrew Dahl, a Swedish 
botanist; and the plant figured, which is the same as that now called D. variahilis, was christened D. pinnata. 
VOL. II. 
