Wine-Eyed Jill Dahlia Tuber
Ah the many beautiful faces of Wine-Eyed Jill! Naturally on one plant, on the same stem even you'll find a wonderful color array from yellow to peach, to pink, and all manner of variations therein. All are beautiful, cheerful, and possessing of a nice dark eye, thus the name. All the colors work really well together.
Jill is nice and tall, very strong, and has beautiful dark, wiry stems that make for really striking contrast. The blooms are small, about 2-4 inches, with a well-formed ball shape. And she's also very vigorous, early, and tolerant of poor conditions.
Most of my florist clients prefer all my dahlias trimmed down to no leaves and just one flower on top of a nice long, slender stem, but I think there's a case to be made for this dahlia (and Golden Scepter) to be left branching with many blooms--that is if you're not already disbudding. Each stem can have 2-4 blooms, all in good timing with each other (many dahlias stagger their blooming and leaving multiple heads on one stem will get you into trouble with the older, lower bloom tanking much faster than the younger upper blooms.). The branching effect reminds me of working with cosmos, and works really well in my own bouquet making.
Wine Eyed Jill is a joyful flower, offering a lot to delight the eyes!
She's a great choice for many colors on low-square footage because of the variety she expresses naturally.