I have been a dahlia grower for many years. The beauty of these plants provides pleasure on several levels. Of course, they make great photo subjects, but they add gorgeous color to any site. A bouquet or a single dahlia floating in a bowl makes a terrific table centerpiece. Because my garden space is situated in front of my house, many neighbors stop by to admire them and to tell me how they help to dress up the neighborhood.

To be able to spend time among my dahlias (I grow >100 plants), grooming them, surrounded by all that beauty, to one as addicted as I am, approaches a transcendent experience. Of course, a bottle of fermented grape juice at my side helps.

I used to grow dahlias is the well known dahlia garden in S.F.'s Golden Gate Park until I could't afford the time required to do an adequate job. Visitors from many sites, including foreign countries, would inform me that the garden was on their "must see" list whenever visiting S.F.

A few interesting facts about dahlias: Although many folks think of the "dinner Plate" dahlias their grandmother grew, they come in many forms and sizes (the American Dahlia Society recognize 23 categories). The ADS also recognizes 16 color categories; some are really color blends or mixtures.
You will never see a blue or green dahlia;the plant is genetically incapable of achieving this. Some growers have been trying to hybridize a black dahlia, but there is much debate as to whether these are truly black.

The "flower" is really a composite of many flowers on 1 flower head. Each individual petal is actually a complete flower by itself, with male and female reproductive parts. As such, they are technically referred to as "blooms" rather than flowers.

One last interesting (I hope) fact is that somewhere along their journey from Mexico to the New World and their trips and storage in Europe, they underwent a doubling of their chromosomes and then another doubling, so that they now possess 4 pairs of chromosomes, or 8 single chromosomes. Whereas you and I have 1 pair of chromosomes a designation called "diploid", they are "octoploid". This probably helps account for the great variability in plant forms; with so many genes, there are myriad possibilities for combination to make a new plant.