What's Blooming

Dahlia

Come soak up the festivities of the Lunar New Year with our in-house grown Dahlias! With a bold spectrum of seas colours such as red, pink, and yellow that matches the season, the themed display definitely makes a great place to take your OOTDs! There are several dahlia floral forms featured in the display such as the cactus, collarette, anemone and waterlily, so spot them if you can!

Native to Mexico and Central America, Dahlia is a genus of about 42 different species belonging to the Asteraceae family, which also includes the commonly known sunflower, daisies, and chrysanthemums. It is no surprise that dahlias are the national flower of Mexico, its homeland! Dahlia species can be found growing on the uplands and mountains in Mexico, from elevations between 1500 and 3700 meters.  

Although originating from Mexico, the genus Dahlia is actually named after Andreas Dahl, a Swedish botanist and a student of Carl Linnaeus, by the Madrid Botanical Gardens back in the 1790s.

Featured here is Dahlia ‘Night Butterfly’, an eye-catching collarette-form Dahlia. Collarette dahlias are open-faced, with a collar-like ring of smaller, frilly ray florets sandwiched between the larger ray florets and central yellow disc florets. ‘Night Butterfly’ has very striking deep red ray florets, contrasting with a ring of smaller red and white disc florets. This is definitely one of the favourites of the horticulturists growing them!

This year’s Dahlia Dreams display features about 2000 dahlias of 70 different cultivars, all grown in-house by our horticulturists. Come and spot for yourselves the many other floral forms and cultivars of the dazzling dahlias!

This article is part of our What's Blooming series.