The History of Dahlias

Every flower has its story and place in history. The dahlia is no exception.

Today it is commonly known as the national flower of Mexico. But how did it become so popular that it is now available all over the world? When in season, these flowers can be found at just about every florist.

They are popular to grow, as well as to gift when you need to send flowers for somebody’s birthday or any other occasion. They are great garden flowers, due to their long blooming season, and they last really long as cut flowers, too.

Being the national flower of Mexico, it is quite fitting that this flower originates from Mexico itself. The ancient Aztecs were very familiar with cultivating it and the first kind of Dahlia to be discovered by people outside of Mexico was the tree Dahlia. It has a hollow stem and grows to a height of approximately 20 feet! The Aztecs, a resourceful people, use these flowers as a source of water. The cut stems could also be refilled and used to carry water. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they conquered the Aztec people and had their botanists take various plants from the land back to Spain with them. One of the plants that they chose to take was the tree Dahlia.

Plants and seeds were cultivated in Spain at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid, where the Director, Abbe’ Cavanilles, named the Dahlia in honor of the botanist Anders Dahl,

In Germany the genus was named Georgina after the botanist Johann Gottlieb Georgi, a name by which it is still known, even today. Dahlias do not have normal roots; instead they develop, or can be grown from, tubers. For this reason, they were intentionally cultivated as you would potatoes. However, the roots were not nearly as popular as the flower would become. The seeds and tubers were sold all over Europe, and soon this plant was on top of the world! Ball, or fully double, type was developed in the eighteenth century, thanks to hybridization. In 1872 something quite remarkable happened! A shipment of tubers had been sent from Mexico to Holland but, unfortunately, all but one of these tubers perished on the way. The one that survived was a new kind and was used to create the vast numbers of colors that we know today.

There were two main varieties available in their natural environment. However, thanks to hybridization, we now have more than forty thousand kinds, which have been developed into different variations. While most other flowers only have two genes that affect what the plant will look like the Dahlia has eight genes, making it one of the most versatile trial flowers on the market today. Therefore, the Dahlia can take on lot of different forms, colors and sizes without anyone understanding that the flowers actually are closely related, so closely, that they share the same genes. In fact, there are simply so many different kinds of dahlias that it would take up several football fields if one wanted to plant all of them in the same area.

Come learn how to grow these beautiful flowers at the Sidney Garden club, held at the library the first Saturday of each month.