Gitts Attention Dahlia Tuber
Gitts Attention is a great white informal decorative that has a good 4-inch ball-ish shape, with lovely little pleated, pinking-shear-fimbirated petals. A good production-flower for those who need deep stem counts. There's little to no yellowing in the center, which we love, and they have a great frothy, fizzy texture.
The plants are notably tall and hedgy with good, strong stems.
Now, let's talk about the reality of fimbriated dahlias for a sec, especially white ones: the petal texture helps hide a LOT of imperfections! Which is not to say that I'm advocating for the sale of imperfect flowers, or trying to hustle blooms that won't hold up, I'm just saying we all know how heartbreaking it is to toss a perfect flower for one tiny-but-noticeable mar, nip, or spot. We had a ton of grasshoppers in 2023, a response to the drought here in Minnesota (when the wild world is dry, but our well-watered gardens are lush, all the hungry wild things come to take their share), and they love chomping the just-barely-opening face of a new dahlia bud, and leave behind some weird textures. Kind of like how this flower looks all on it's own. White dahlias are magnets for all the critters that like to eat flowers, they most glow like a beacon at night, especially those perfect ball flowers where one bite is noticeable from a mile away, and so having SOME kind of strategy in place that helps make more usable stems is kind of ideal, even if it's odd. And so, having a texture that helps camouflage imperfection is kind of awesome. There were a few moments where unless I knew that the petals were chewed on, because I literally removed the grasshopper to cut the flower, I would not have been able to tell that anything was amiss with the bloom. That's bloody brilliant.
Now, a warning, this can backfire, I had one wholesaler almost reject a whole bucket of PERFECT Gitts Attention thinking they were grasshopper chewed, mostly because I think he'd never seen this flower before, but once we talked it through it was fine, They were late season blooms, so I knew the hoppers were done. (We've got to be on top of our game educating our customers!)