Last week, I released my list of the Top 10 summer flowers only to find that 10 wasn’t enough to cover all the great blooms out there. What about lisianthus, asked a fellow flower lover.
He’s right: lisianthus is gorgeous and can last well over a week as a cut flower.
And I realized I’d neglected another star of the season – the beguiling and mysterious dahlia. “You’re talking about quite a magnificent creation,” says Alan Fisher of the American Dahlia Society, dahlia.org. “They offer a tremendous range of possibilities.”
Photo courtesy of the American Dahlia Society
Consider these facts about dahlias:
• There are 50,000 named varieties.
• An individual flower can have up to 300 petals.
• The ADS recognizes 18 classifications of form and 15 different colors or color combinations. (Color is second to form when exhibiting dahlias.)
• There is also great variation in size. The smallest measure less than 2 inches in diameter; the largest are about 18 inches. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, however. Most times, it’s a smaller dahlia that wins best in show at competitions. That’s because as petals get larger, they get less precise.
• Most dahlias have significant depth, ie they are not flat like sunflowers.
• Dahlias were originally found in the mountains of Mexico about 200 years ago. Seeds were brought to Europe and hybrids were produced.
• The name dahlia comes from a Swedish botanist named Anders Dahl (1751 -1789).
• Movie and TV actress Arlene Dahl (born 1928) is a direct descendant of Anders Dahl.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts on caring for dahlias as cut flowers and how the subject of Hollywood’s most famous unsolved crime – the Black Dahlia – acquired her floral nickname.
Flower Fact of the Day: A hybrid geranium has been created for the grande dame of gardening in San Diego’s Balboa Park, Kate Sessions: signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080621/news_1m21balboa.html.