For most of my gardening life I have steered clear of dahlias. They always seemed like too much work — planting the tubers in the spring, then digging, labeling, and storing them in the fall. Not to mention checking on them periodically throughout the winter to make sure they haven’t gotten rotten or moldy. I thought, what could be worth all that bother?
But last spring, a friend offered me a box full of extra dahlia tubers, some red and others whitish pink, that she didn’t have space for. I decided to give them a try.
I found a sunny place in the backyard, added a generous helping of compost, and planted the tubers with their eyes facing up, as my friend had instructed. The next day, I discovered that our puppy had dug them all out and distributed them around the yard.
Evidently she didn’t like the taste of them, because they were pretty much still intact. I replanted as many as I could find and secured the area with several panels of old edging fence I’d used to keep our former dog, a mad digger, from destroying the garden.
Within a week or so, the plants began poking their heads out of the ground. By early July, they started blooming. The deep red flowers came first, then the larger ones, white tinged with pink. There were enough to cut while leaving plenty to admire on the plants.
I was smitten. I realized that dahlias might actually be worth the trouble.
Dahlias are native to Mexico and Central America, where the climate is warm enough for them to stay in the ground all year. Dahlia tubers were a food crop for the Aztecs, who also used them to treat epilepsy. The Aztecs also used the plants’ long hollow stems as water pipes.
Spanish explorers who reached the New World in the 16th century were intrigued by the flowers and brought some back home. It is said that Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, was given some dahlia seeds that had been stolen from the royal gardens of Madrid. She refused to share the plants with anyone, and when a member of her court made off with some dahlia tubers, she became furious and had all the dahlias torn from her gardens.
The plants were originally known by their Mexican name, cocoxochitl. But as they became more popular and widespread throughout the 18th century, the name proved too unwieldy. They were renamed dahlias, after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, who studied the plant and crossed different strains to produce exciting new cultivars. Dahlias are members of the Asterceae family, which includes chrysanthemums, daisies and sunflowers.
I can’t think of another flower that comes even close to dahlias as far as variety goes. This is due to their unusual genetic composition. Unlike most plants, which are diploids, meaning that they have two sets of chromosomes, dahlias are octoploids. This means that there are virtually limitless possibilities; thousands of new hybrids are registered every year.
Dahlias are categorized according to their flower structure — whether or not they have a visible central disc — and their configuration of florets, the proper name for the petals. Florets can be flat, involute (curled inward), or revolute (curled outward). Blossoms range in size from 2 inches in diameter — the “minis” — to the “dinner plate” variety.
The world’s largest dahlia to date, measuring 14⅞ inches across, was recognized by the American Dahlia Society in 2019.
Dahlia breeders have been able to produce every color and nuance of shade except blue. This is not for want of trying. In 1846, the Caledonia Horticultural Society of Edinburgh offered 2,000 pounds to the first person to produce a blue dahlia. No one has yet claimed the prize.
There are many dahlia fanatics in our midst, as evidenced by the proliferation of dahlia societies around the country. The mother ship is the American Dahlia Society, which supervises the judging, classification, registration, naming and all other official aspects of the plant.
There is fierce competition among dahlia breeders and growers, who enter their prize blossoms in shows where they are judged according to standards set forth by the ADS. The American Dahlia Society National Show, the Olympics of the dahlia world, is held every year in different venues.
Competitors are known to tuck cotton balls at the base of the flower head to achieve the optimal 45-degree angle for ideal viewing (the cotton is removed right before the judging). A stray grain of pollen, a single irregular floret, can doom an otherwise spectacular entry to the “also ran” category.
As I write this piece, the days are getting shorter and nights are getting colder. Soon my dahlias will need to be dug up, cleaned and prepared for winter storage in a space that stays a steady 40-50 degrees. Another fall ritual in the garden, along with leaf raking, hose emptying, stashing of summer planters and a host of other seasonal tasks.
Speaking of autumnal events, when I was in Walmart a few days ago I noticed a large bin near the camping and hunting supplies labeled “Deer Corn.” For a moment I thought it was something like “Squirrel Corn,” a product that always makes me smile to know that there are people out there who actually encourage squirrels to come to their yards.
But deer corn is used by hunters to lure deer to their own convenient killing fields. The sight of the “Deer Corn” brought to mind a childhood experience of my mother’s that I recount in my forthcoming book “The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, A Granddaughter’s Memoir.”
My grandfather was reputed to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s model for Jay Gatsby. He lived a truly Gatsbyesque existence until he lost his fortune in the Great Crash of 1929 and retreated into penurious seclusion on his vast ranch in Carmel Valley, California. My grandparents were divorced, and my mother and her brother made occasional visits to see their father.
During one visit, when my mother was 9 or 10, he summoned the children from their beds and ordered them to go out and shoot some game birds. He told them that he had invited guests to lunch and wanted to serve them something special.
The children were handy with guns and often hunted on the ranch. They found a covey of quail in the underbrush and shot them on the ground. “It was not a sporting thing to do,” said my mother. “But we had a job to do and we didn’t have much time.”
I don’t think my mother would have approved of “Deer Corn.” Or dahlia competitions, for that matter.
Mickey Rathbun, an Amherst-based lawyer turned journalist, has written the “Get Growing” column since 2016.