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Posted on 10:56 AM by Wanto and filed under
By Mia Johnson
At the present day the dahlia has a bewildering range of sizes, formations and colouring, more so than perhaps any other garden flower-a wonderful tribute to the immense amount of work accomplished by hybridists since its introduction into Europe in producing varieties so vastly different from the original seedlings which were grown from seed sent over from Mexico.
The Joint Dahlia Committee-composed of an equal number of members from the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Dahlia Society.
Certainly they developed quite naturally from the paeony-flowered varieties, which had comparatively flat petals, but as the ball dahlia was evolved from much the same parentage, other blood must have been introduced. For the ball dahlia only the smaller varieties would have been used, but for the decorative and the cactus varieties the larger forms of pacony-flowered dahlias were used with increasing success, until at the present clay we have dahlias of both formations ranging from under 3 to 15 in. and more in diameter.
The division between the decorative and the cactus dahlias has never been very clear. At one time the exhibition cactus was the very finely quilled type only. Variations from this were known as garden or hybrid cactus and this term included many blooms which we would classify today as decorative. Later, the National Dahlia Society divided cactus dahlias into two classes.
The finely quilled varieties were styled cactus, and those with broader petals were classed as semi-cactus. The decorative were similarly divided into two classes, formal and informal. It was finally decided that the classification was becoming too complex.
The difference between border line varieties often became a subject of dispute, and very much a matter of opinion, so that the sub-division of each section was abandoned.
The Joint Dahlia Committee-composed of an equal number of members from the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Dahlia Society.
Certainly they developed quite naturally from the paeony-flowered varieties, which had comparatively flat petals, but as the ball dahlia was evolved from much the same parentage, other blood must have been introduced. For the ball dahlia only the smaller varieties would have been used, but for the decorative and the cactus varieties the larger forms of pacony-flowered dahlias were used with increasing success, until at the present clay we have dahlias of both formations ranging from under 3 to 15 in. and more in diameter.
The division between the decorative and the cactus dahlias has never been very clear. At one time the exhibition cactus was the very finely quilled type only. Variations from this were known as garden or hybrid cactus and this term included many blooms which we would classify today as decorative. Later, the National Dahlia Society divided cactus dahlias into two classes.
The finely quilled varieties were styled cactus, and those with broader petals were classed as semi-cactus. The decorative were similarly divided into two classes, formal and informal. It was finally decided that the classification was becoming too complex.
The difference between border line varieties often became a subject of dispute, and very much a matter of opinion, so that the sub-division of each section was abandoned.
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