The Herbarium
Part V · Garden flowers
Herb. No. 245
Dahlia
Dahlia × pinnata
Asteraceae
Mexico’s original food tuber that Europe turned into a show bloom — petals for a salad, tubers for a dry-winter cellar.
Garden dahlia. Tubers and petals of culinary types are food. Do not eat a florist bunch you cannot name as unsprayed.
- Parts used
- Tuber · Petal
- Traditional notes
- Roasted tuber · Edible petal · Cut flower
- Grow · USDA 6b
- Tender. Lift after frost in zone 6b. Tubers after the soil is warm, or starts. Pinch for branching. In work: May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct
- Harvest
- Flowers all summer. Tubers after the tops blacken from frost.
- Label the clump you mean to eat. Show beds get spray.
- Store like potatoes but drier — peat or paper, cool, not a wet cellar.
Safety
Inulin can bloat a sensitive gut. Small servings first.
Companions
Plant with Cornflower, Cosmos, Snapdragon, Sunflower, Zinnia.
Lore
The Aztec acocotli was a food and a water pipe (the hollow stem). Europeans ignored the tuber and bred the flower until the plate was all show. Food types are being bred back now, quietly, for people who like a root with a history.
The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.