At 3:39 PM -0700 10/22/05, Don Mahoney wrote: >Here at the botanical garden in San Francisco we have numerous >clones of Dahlia imperialis, most wild colllected from southern >Mexico and Guatamala. Some have flowers to 5 inches across. One >clone blooms early (a few weeks prior to Thanksgiving ) while most >bloom closer to Christmas. They come from white to pink to dark >lavender and there are double and single forms of most. Some have >reached to 18 feet tall.. When crossed they produce lots of viable >seed and some interesting (shorter, stockier) forms are being >developed. We also have two more everblooming species. Dahlia >tenuicaulis hails from Chiapas, Mexico and blooms May through >February It has two inch mid lavender flowers and only gets 8 to 10 >feet tall. Dahlia sp. nova has thin half inches stems and leans >through other plants to 10 feet and blooms April to March with large >4 inch pink flowers that hang downwards. It has smaller leaves. Some >of the hybrids being developed seem to be everblooming. > Don Mahoney San Francisco Bot garden at Strybing Arboretum **Small world. I did a search for the other colors of D. imperialis after they were discussed on the list and remembered that we have an antique rose nursery about 40 minutes away, and she carried two different D. imperialis, a deep purple with an orange center and a double white. Both, she said, came from Strybing. I picked up one of each today. -- susan hayek, North Coast of CA, USA, zone 9b, Sunset zone 17. 15 miles south of Eureka, CA, with a peek of the ocean.