Cheyenne Dahlias
If you like flowers that pop and have vivid and intense colors, then Cheyenne is a nice choice. This variety is considered lacinated, which means if you look at the tips of each petal, you will see they are split. The blooms are a hot red for most of the outer petal, but are yellow towards the center giving the flower the appearance of being on fire. Similar to a cactus bloom style, there is a very feathery appearance to each bloom. Our plants always bloomed heavily and the cut blooms were nice in arrangements. Each plant grew to 3.5-4 feet tall and bloomed in a reasonable time for an average 90 day variety. Rain and water could hang heavy on the petals, so the flowers were not very pretty after a rain storm. It seemed to tolerate some crowding, but if the surrounding plants got too big, Cheyenne would respond by reducing the number of blooms. It thrived in our environment and produced a nice number of tubers each fall.
Cheyenne was one of the first varieties we started growing. We purchased a tuber from a vendor at the Ilwaco Farmer’s Market. It thrived in out garden for a number of years and was always a favorite. In our early days, Nichole didn’t know much about dahlias. I still remember her sitting on the back deck, unpacking tubers after the first winter, shavings blowing in the wind and her being totally overwhelmed at all the tubers to plant. There is so much to learn about growing dahlias. She was naïve at that time to bacterial diseases that can plague dahlias, nor did she know about the lenticle adaptation dahlias have to express excess water. We no longer have Cheyenne, although have considered getting another. At the end of one fall, it had been raining quite a bit and when the Cheyenne plant came up, there were odd bumps all over the tubers. In a panic that the plant had gotten a disease, it was culled and thrown away. We felt foolish after learning about lenticles and realizing we threw a healthy plant away. Still, there is no harm in being overly cautious and culling any plant that is potentially contaminated.
Attributes of Cheyenne Dahlias
Height – 4 feet
Color – Fiery Red and Yellow
Bloom Size – 5-6″
Bloom Style – Lacinated
Bloom Time – ~100 days
