Dahlia flowers

In central Russia, dahlia flowers delight people with their appearance in August, but they can decorate flower beds, gardens and parks until deep autumn. Today, dahlia flowers are one of the most sought-after and popular plants in the flower business around the world. For example, in Holland, their production takes 2nd place after breeding tulips.

Interestingly, many legends are associated with these magnificent attractive flowers, one of which says that once the dahlia was a royal flower and grew exclusively in the gardens of the powerful. At the same time, it was strictly forbidden to take out dahlia flowers outside the palace. However, one gardener, named George, was so in love with one girl that he dared plant a flower outside her house. The angry king ordered the gardener to be imprisoned in prison, where he spent the rest of his days, but beautiful flowers had already settled in the gardens of commoners, and named them after the gardener - dahlias.

Today, dahlia flowers are not only an attribute of bouquets, but also often used for food. For example, the gastronomic properties of dahlia are highly appreciated in some cuisines in Mexico, where they eat both inflorescences and tubers of a given plant. In addition, delicious and healthy salads are also made on the basis of dahlia petals. All of Central America is characterized by the use of dry dahlia petals or roasted tubers of the plant to make a Dacopa drink - an alternative to tea or coffee. To improve the taste of dahlia (inflorescences have some bitterness), it is customary to add natural honey or cream to it.

Types of dahlias

Today, about 35 species of dahlias are known, which grow in almost all countries of the world. At the same time, breeders successfully bred more than 15 thousand varieties of this plant.

In general, it is customary for lovers to distinguish 4 species of dahlia or 4 groups of varieties of this plant, that is, in terms of the appearance of inflorescences, they can be non-charcoal, half-charcoal, terry and mixed. The concept of terry implies the degree of filling with petals of a flower basket.

Dahlia composition

Interestingly, dahlia, namely tubers and flowers, include some minerals, vitamins, organic acids, proteins and inulin. In Europe and the USA, inulin used in pharmacology is isolated from dahlia tubers - this is a natural and very valuable polysaccharide. From inulin, in turn, it is customary to receive fructose. In official medicine, this product is used as a natural substitute for sugar, as well as starch in a disease such as diabetes mellitus.