the.com/dahlia
a flower that turns competitive, with thousands of varieties bred by obsessives and judged in halls
means A showy garden flower of the daisy family, native to Mexico and Central America, prized for its full, geometric blooms in nearly every color but true blue.
from Named in the 1790s for Anders Dahl, a Swedish botanist and student of Linnaeus, after the plant was sent from Mexico to Madrid's botanical garden. So the flower carries a man's surname — Dahl plus the Latin '-ia' that botanists tack on to honor people in plant names. The Aztecs had grown it long before, calling it 'acocoxochitl,' but European naming won the label race.
- edible tuber
- Aztecs grew it as food before Europeans wanted blooms
- sky-high count
- over 57,000 registered cultivars exist worldwide
- giant form
- dinnerplate dahlias span over a foot wide
- mexican native
- it is Mexico's official national flower
- insulin hopes
- its tubers once tested as a diabetes treatment source
queen elizabeth dahlia — hybrid dahlia cultivar with purple and white petals, named after the british monarch in 1957
black dahlia flower — dark maroon dahlia variety, famous for being found near the unsolved 1947 los angeles murder victim