Dahlia

Commune Name: Dahlia
Botanical Name: Dahlia x hybrid
All are the flowers in most of one Dahlia or it` s botanical name Dahlia x hybrid. Dahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, perennial plants native to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. A member of the Compositae, or Asteraceae dicotyledonous plants, related species include the sunflower, zinnia. Daisy and chrysanthemum. There are at least 36 species of dahlia, with hybrids commonly grown as garden plants. The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963. It was probably Abbe Antonio Jose Cavanilles, Director of the Royal Gardens of Madrid, who should be credited with the attempt to scientifically define the genus, since he not only received the first specimens from Mexico in 1789, but named the first three species that flowered from the cuttings. Many sources state that the name "Dahlia" was bestowed by the pioneering Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus to honor his late student, Anders Dahl, author of Observationes Botanicae. However, Linnaeus died in 1778, more than eleven years before the plant was introduced into Europe in 1789, so while it is generally agreed that the plant was named in honor of Dahl, who had died two years before, Linnaeus could not have been the one who did so. The Aztecs gathered and cultivated the dahlia for food, ceremony, as well as decorative purposes, and the long woody stem of one variety was used for small pipes.
Classification
Since 1789 when Cavanilles first flowered the dahlia in Europe, there has been an ongoing effort by many growers, botanists and taxonomists, to determine the development of the dahlia to modern times. At least 85 species have been reported: approximately 25 of these were first reported from the wild, the remainder appeared in gardens in Europe. They were considered hybrids, the results of crossing between previously reported species, or developed from the seeds sent by Humboldt from Mexico in 1805, or perhaps from some other undocumented seeds that had found their way to Europe.In 1829, all species growing in Europe were reclassified under an all-encompassing name of D. variabilis, Desf. Through the interspecies cross of the Humboldt seeds and the Cavanilles species, 22 new species were reported by that year, all of which had been classified in different ways by several different taxonomists, creating considerable confusion as to which species was which. In 1830 William Smith suggested that all dahlia species could be divided into two groups for color, red-tinged and purple-tinged(92). In investigating this idea Lawrence(58) determined that with the exception of D. variables, all dahlia species may be assigned to one of two groups for flower-color: Group I (ivory-magenta) or Group II (yellow-orange-scarlet).