Color story
Orange & Bronze dahlias
Pumpkin, terracotta, and rust. The autumn-market heroes.
18 varieties profiled
These palettes are our editorial groupings. The ADS classifies color separately with 15 formal classes; profiles note both where verified.
Brown Sugar
Deep rusty copper, a red-brown with an orange glow that vendors reach for words like burnt sienna to describe. Fleur Farm notes perfectly cupped rusty petals.
Cornel Bronze
Muted bronze, recorded under ADS color code BR3. A soft metallic shade that designers use where red or orange would be too loud.
Terracotta
Warm amber and butterscotch tones with a bronzy peach cast, described by sellers as dusty light orange. The color is the whole calling card.
Crichton Honey
Classed bronze, in the garden it reads warm apricot and peachy bronze. One farm describes its stock as cream to pale pink, a minority report worth noting.
Jomanda
Rusty red-orange, a saturated burnt sienna that deepens as nights cool, carried on notably dark stems that flatter the bloom color in arrangements.
Maarn
Honey apricot deepening to tangerine orange, a saturated warm tone.
Gitts Crazy
A swirling dark blend of golden bronze with a rosy-purple reverse, so the bloom reads differently as the petals catch light. The Cincinnati Dahlia Society classes it B ST DB, a medium stellar.
Ferncliff Copper
Warm peachy copper, a fall tone that arrangers reach for from late summer on.
Lark's Ebbe
A bronze-peach that shifts through the season, ADS class 3011, never quite the same color twice.
Valley Rust Bucket
Classed bronze: an amber two-tone with orange petals over a strawberry-red reverse, so the ball shifts color with viewing angle.
Totally Tangerine
Tangerine orange petals with a rose pink reverse around a rust to golden orange pincushion center.
Sandia Brocade
Warm golden orange shading to cantaloupe, with reflexed outer petals around a tubular, fringed center, all carried on dark stems.
Bloomquist Jean
A clear orange on a medium informal decorative, ADS class B ID, clean enough to win and useful enough to cut.
Lake Hills Creamsicle
An orange-and-cream blend on an open peony form, named for the frozen treat it resembles.
Coseytown Oriole
Fiery red-orange with uncommonly dark centers, set off by glossy dark foliage and near-black stems. The dark eye and dark plant make the hot color read even hotter.
Copper Boy
A dark blend running rust red through burnt orange, with chocolate at the center. Idlewild reads it as moody velvety copper, Sunset View as deeply saturated rust red, DutchGrown as burnt orange red with a hint of chocolate at the center, and Heirloom Soul simply as deep bronze. The ADS files it as a dark blend, which is the right call: it is not one color.
Pooh
Bright orange outer petals outlined and tipped in yellow, around a yellow collar and a yellow central disc. Swan Island files the color as orange; British sellers read the same flower as red and yellow, and Heirloom Soul as bright yellow and red. The yellow tipping varies bloom to bloom, which is most of why the descriptions differ.
Sierra Glow
Deep coral shading to bronze, and it changes with the light the way most of the good warm blends do. The ADS files it under bronze; Heirloom Soul reads it as deep vibrant coral bronze. Big blooms in this range read warmer at a distance than they do in the hand.