ADS form FD
Formal Decorative dahlias
Fully double blooms with flat, broad ray florets in a regular, even arrangement that recurves gradually toward the stem. The tidy classic of the decorative group.
Formal Decorative varieties carry an ADS size letter: AA (over 10 inches) down to M (up to 4 inches). The catalog word "dinnerplate" maps loosely to AA and A; it is marketing language, not a class.
Profiled formal decorative varieties
Castle Drive
A light blend in soft sherbet peach. Coseytown and Idlewild note it carries less yellow than the varieties it gets confused with.
Rock Run Ashley
Soft guava pink with a muted peach cast that reads almost nude in bright light. Idlewild Blooms notes the color shifts between guava pink and muted peach over the season.
Bloomquist Tory P
Blush lavender over a pale base, ADS color chip PK18. Vendors describe a silvery, muted pink with a marshmallow base and an amethyst blush, like petals cut from porcelain.
Sweet Nathalie
A light blend in champagne and bisque, a soft neutral that shows more blush early in the season.
Peaches-N-Cream
A light blend of peach and cream, with streaks and brushmarks of each color varying bloom to bloom. No two flowers stripe quite the same way, which is most of the charm.
American Dawn
A coral, raspberry, and plum ombre that refuses to sit still. Good Life Dahlias notes the colors change through the season, from bright pink with purple hues to bronze with the same purple undertones.
Chimacum Night
Chocolatey burgundy mahogany, classed dark red by DahliaAddict. Floret simply calls the blooms beautiful mahogany, and in the field they read like dark chocolate with a red wine glaze.
Blizzard
Pure white, ADS color class W, with the clean petal geometry of a formal decorative. No cream cast, no blush, which is precisely what designers buying white want to hear.
Diva
ADS color class purple. Vendors describe deep burgundy-plum petals with an iridescent purple sheen that shifts in the light, darker and moodier than the typical purple decorative.
Wine Eyed Jill
A light blend of petite pink petals around a wine to burgundy center, with an occasional yellow splash.
KA's Bella Luna
White with a lavender blush in cool climates, shifting to all white in warm climates and late season. The color is weather-dependent, which is the variety's signature trick.
Thomas Edison
Velvety deep purple. Old House Gardens calls it the truest deep purple of all dahlias, a color photos cannot quite capture and one modern breeders still envy.
Ferncliff Copper
Warm peachy copper, a fall tone that arrangers reach for from late summer on.
Kelvin Floodlight
Bright clear yellow on a giant formal decorative, ADS class AA FD, big enough to read across a garden.
Bracken Palomino
A shifting peachy-orange to peachy-coral, the color moving through the season and even across a single bloom.
Bracken Sarah
A soft peach-apricot blend, the gentler sister to Bracken Palomino in the same warm family.
Lark's Ebbe
A bronze-peach that shifts through the season, ADS class 3011, never quite the same color twice.
Fluffles
Shell to bubblegum pink outer petals around a creamy eggnog center.
Bracken Rose
Dusty rose, often called ballet slipper pink, with slight purple undertones.
Irish Gnome
A clear yellow on a tiny micro formal decorative, perfect and precise at under two inches.
KA's Mocha Jo
Blush pink with tawny parchment accents, the most layered color in the Mocha line. The parchment edges give each bloom a soft, antique cast.
KA's Rose Quartz
Medium pink with a darker center and a white highlight on the central petals. The light center against the deeper pink gives blooms a lit-from-within look.
Coseytown Rosewood
Muted muddy red with a contrasting lavender reverse on the newest petals. The two-tone effect, deep red face against a cooler lavender back, gives blooms unusual depth.
Coseytown EverPeach
A solid midtone orange-peach bred to hold a consistent color all season as daylight shortens, a trait the breeder calls rare. Most peach dahlias drift with the season; this one is selected not to.