Dahlias

Of all the flower photos I have snapped over the years, the above shot of the white dahlia is one of my very favorites! I was so happy to have isolated it against a dark background and caught the full magnificence of the flower as well as I did! I took the photo on a sunny day with a brick wall in shadow behind the flower, and the dark background was one of those rare, happy accidents.

^{screenshot from BING Maps}

When my father was alive, he had a favorite barber to cut his hair. The barber owns a small shop in the small town nearby and ran that shop every day for decades. As he got older, however, he hired a couple of younger barbers to run the shop and opened a room in the basement of his house (with a separate outside entrance, see photo) where he took care of longtime, loyal customers who preferred his services to that of the other barbers.

One time, I went inside and sat while my father had his hair cut. Most of the time, however, I waited outside so the menfolk could talk to each other without any interference from me. The barber's wife had pretty flowers planted alongside this driveway: zinnias, marigolds, hostas, and others, so it was at this house that I took quite a few of my flower photos, including the white dahlia.

Dahlias have always been one of my favorite flowers because of the profusion of petals they have. I dearly love flowers of all colors, but I think the most striking color is the white as shown above! 😊

However...

The recent day I went to Maggie's Galley restaurant to eat with a family member, I was treated to quite a stunning sight. I saw some of the biggest dahlias I have ever seen in a gorgeous, sunny, buttery-yellow color! They were bigger than my hand! In fact, they were so large that I wasn't even sure they were dahlias but wondered if they might be something else.

We had already eaten and left the restaurant. However, I was so impressed with these flowers that I went back inside to ask about them. As I went back into the restaurant, another woman walked in ahead of me. She told the hostess that she was there to pickup a carryout order, so the hostess turned to me and I asked her about the flowers. She confirmed that they were, indeed, a variety of dahlia called "dinner plate dahlias" because of their enormous size. The woman customer that was waiting for carryout said she had some like them at her house! She told me the best place to get them is from Swan Island Dahlias. They have been in business for 93 years and their website states that they have 40 acres of dahlias at their location in the US state of Oregon and are open to the public!

August & September come stroll through almost 40 acres of beautiful dahlias at our farm in Canby, Oregon. The fields open August 1st each season and remain open through September (into October weather permitting). [source]

In the above photo, part of my hand is visible in the lower-left, as I had to hold the bloom to turn it towards the camera. I didn't have a ruler handy at the time, but would guess that the flowers were easily 8"–10" (20cm–25cm) across! I learned from the Swan Island Dahlias website that they even have cultivars that are larger than these! 😮 Looking through their website, I think I have identified the exact cultivar of this dahlia: Harvest Moonlight. Their information lists the plant's height at 4.5 feet (1.37 metres) which is about right for the plants I saw — they were really tall!

As a member of the botanical Asteraceae family, the Dahlia is related to other common plants, including sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, zinnia, aster, fleabane, dandelion, chicory, artichokes, and even lettuce. The plant family of Asteraceae is so important to human existence that there is a separate field of science devoted to its study, called: Synantherology.

The name of the field refers to the fused anthers possessed by members of the family, and recalls an old French name, synantherées, for the family. [source]