seedkeeping:See the seeds? Black and creviced in the base of the dried out petals of the dried dah

seedkeeping: See the seeds? Black and creviced in the base of the dried out petals of the dried dahlia flower. It hybridizes easily so we are always creating new varieties - and when they are beautiful, we save the tubers and crowns and we clone the beauty. A lot of the food we eat is cloned: potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, bananas, apples. Unfortunately, thousands of years of cloning can impact the ability for the plant to reproduce sexually (bananas, yacon, etc.) so it can be hard to introduce more genetic diversity and therefore resilience and resistance to disease and changing climate. Dahlias (aka Acocotli) were domesticated by the Aztecs for eating the tubers and for the stems as a source of water. Because of its endless ability to shapeshift and create new types of pretty flowering plants - many people have been breeding dahlias sexually for this purpose since the introduction of the plant to Europe in the 1500s. In addition to breeding back old Victorian varieties, we are working on again breeding good eating varieties so stay tuned! #dahliasoftheday #dahlias #edibledahlias #roughwoodseedcollection #dahliabreeding #breedingdahlias #plantbreeding #sexualreproduction #cloningplants #cloning #tubers #seedheads -- source link
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