Dahlia Mania: The Victorian Obsession Behind Mexico's National Flower

From Aztec Food Crop to European Obsession

Dahlias are native to the mountain highlands of Mexico and Guatemala, where they grew long before Europeans encountered them. The Aztecs valued the plant for practical reasons as much as beauty — they ate the tubers and used the hollow stems of the tallest varieties as makeshift water pipes — and regarded the flower as a symbol of strength, given how well it flourished in rugged terrain. Its Nahuatl name, acocoxóchitl, translates literally to "hollow stem flower."

The Craze That Followed

Dahlias didn't reach Europe until the late 1700s, when seeds were sent from Mexico City's botanical garden to the Royal Gardens in Madrid. Once they arrived in England in the early 1800s, breeders went to work, and by the mid-1800s thousands of cultivated varieties already existed. The competitive scene got formal enough that the National Dahlia Society was founded in 1881 specifically to organize flower-show competitions, and by the 1930s more than 14,000 named cultivars had been recorded — an obsession historians still refer to as "dahlia mania."

National Flower Status

Mexico made it official in 1963, naming the dahlia its national flower in recognition of the plant's deep roots in the country's history and identity — a distinction that took nearly two centuries after the flower left Mexican soil to make its way back home as a point of national pride.

Bringing Dahlias Home

Unlike the dried stems elsewhere in our shop, dahlias are a fresh-cut flower, so they need a little more care: recut the stems at an angle under running water, use cool water in the vase, and change that water every two days, since dahlias are thirstier than most cut flowers. Our fresh dahlias make a striking birthday or thinking-of-you gift on their own — big, ruffled blooms in colors that single-handedly explain why nineteenth-century breeders lost their minds over this plant.