Of the easily recognizable species of the Pink Queen dahlia seedlings were 
dahlias Cervantesii, Coccinea, Merckii, Viridiflora (the green flowering dahlia), and 
one closely resembling Juarezii, the cactus dahlia. 
About thirty-five, or twenty-five percent, of the Pink Queen seedlings were so 
outstanding that I am going to grow them next year in my display garden. They were 
large, decorative and informal types, the colors ranging from pink, white, deep pink, 
lavendar, rose and champagne colors. (It was about this time in the garden that my 
excitement reached fever-pitch, as each day some new seedling, better than its pre- 
decessors came into bloom. Evelyn Chandler produced eight seedlings. Evelyn 
Chandler is a gold-colored, semi-cactus variety and produced six new dahlias, all 
beautiful, but one an in-curved, pure yellow, semi-cactus eleven inches in diameter. 
Andrei’s Orange As, the beautiful miniature from Holland, produced eight fine 
miniature seedlings, the colors ranging from pure yellow to fiery crimson and one a 
salmon-colored semi-cactus. A few were miniature decoratives. Violette, a small 
semi-cactus from France, produced four seedlings; one, a pink, informal decorative, 
two, a pure white duplex white, and three, a very rich cerise-purple, incurved cactus 
about six inches in diameter. The bushes have been blooming all summer. 
Now for the white varieties: Dr. Harden, of the Biology Department at the 
University of California at Santa Barbara, advised me that white-flowering varieties 
would probably produce white seedlings. Right here I want to emphasize the fact 
that all of the thousands of named varieties of dahlias in our gardens today represent 
the 16lst generation of hybrid dahlias, as it was in 1789 that Vicente Cervantes, 
Director of the Mexican Botanic Garden, sent dahlia roots and seed to the Abbé 
Cavanilles, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid. The following year 
roots and seed were dissemivated to various Botanic gardens of Europe and America, 
becoming the forerunners of all the dahlias in our gardens today, so I called Dr. 
Harden’s attention to the fact that occasionally the opening petals of a white flower 
will have veins with a trace of color, which undoubtedly indicates that in the ancestry 
of white dahlias color is present. Estrellita, a white miniature cactus dahlia, produced 
six semi-cactus dahlias, pink and lavendar in color. D’Arcy Sainsbury produced a large 
lavendar decorative, very reminiscent of 1—Bessie Bostons Shudow’s lavendar. 2—a 
large white decorative. 3—a large yellow, incurved cactus dahlia. (Dr. Harden has 
asked me to produce third generation seed of this variety, which will be grown under 
test conditions next year). 
