trendy, but…

dahlias are trendy. if you spend time on social media, dahlias are the flower of the moment. my inner-rebel wants to not like dahlias. but, damn it, dahlias are pretty. so here i am, photographing dahlias.

want a few factoids on dahlias? i thought you would never ask. lol.

• The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963.
• There are now more than 57,000 registered cultivars of dahlia, which are officially registered through the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). The official register is The International Register of Dahlia Names 1969 (1995 reprint) which is updated by annual supplements. The original 1969 registry published about 14,000 cultivars adding a further 1700 by 1986 and in 2003 there were 18,000. Since then about a hundred new cultivars are added annually.
• Dahlias are cousins to the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, and zinnia.
• Their great variety results from dahlias being octoploids—that is, they have eight sets of homologous chromosomes, whereas most plants have only two.

dahlia detail