SPECIFIC CHARACTER, &C.
Dahlia, foliis oppositis, impari-pinnatis; pinnulis quinque, ovatis, crenato-dentatis. Cav. Ic. 1. 57. tab. 80.
Dahlia, with leaves opposite, pinnated with an odd one; the pinnules five, ovate, and notch-dentated.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. A young flower with the peduncle and empalement.
2.One of the radiating florets with its pedicel.
3.A floret of the disk.
4.The same spread open, to show the chives and pointal.
5. The pointal detached, with the summit magnified
The genus Dahlia was first established by the celebrated botanist Cavanilles[E], (in honour of Andrew Dahl, a Swedish botanist, not Dale an Englishman,) for three lofty, thick-rooted, perennial plants, natives of the distant regions of Peru; but all of which we have had the recent pleasure of seeing alive in the overflowing gardens of our own happy country. They are extremely desirable and showy plants; and none of them more so than the present one; which was raised from seeds sent from Madrid last spring, by the Right Hon. Lady Holland, and flowered last September and October, in the open ground, in her Ladyship’s collection at Holland House, Kensington; where our drawing was lately made. It has acquired the stately height of near eight feet, with a circumference of three; and makes indeed a truly specious appearance: but we do not expect it will ripen its seeds; the season being too far advanced to encourage any reasonable hope of that nature.
The best mode of propagation should seem to be that of dividing its somewhat tuberous roots, after the stems die down. As to treatment, we see no valid reason why it, and both the other Dahliæ, (the coccinea and rosea,) should not be treated as hardy herbaceous plants; placed in rich earth and a warm situation. But as they are both rare and valuable, it may at present be safer to consider them as green-house plants, keeping them in very large pots and well watered, until their stems show symptoms of dying down; when moisture must be administered with a sparing hand.
There are considerable reasons for thinking that the pinnated Dahlia will hereafter be raised with double flowers, because the figure in Cavanilles’ Icones, above cited, represents them nearly semi-double; and the doubling of radiated syngenesious plants is well known to horticulturists to be a circumstance of pretty frequent occurrence.
[E] The public have now to regret the loss of this valuable botanist; they are deprived of him: he died in May last at Madrid, aged 59.[Pg 97]
