Black Satin

Swan Island Dahlias introduced Black Satin in 1995 and still lists it three decades on, which in a trade that drops varieties constantly is its own kind of endorsement. No hybridizer is named on any source we could verify, including Swan Island's own listing, so the breeder stays unrecorded here rather than guessed. Near black dahlias are a small and competitive corner of the catalog, and the honest thing to say is that no dahlia is actually black. This one gets as close as the pigment allows, then leans on scale and stem count to do the rest.

Black Satin is a small dark decorative grown for cutting rather than for size, and the reason to plant it is stem count. Swan Island describes lots of long stems and blooms; Heirloom Soul reports the same, tons of long cuttable stems, and calls the plant prolific and petite. Blooms sit around 4 inches, with catalogs quoting anywhere from 3 to 6, on a plant that reaches about 5 feet. Very dark reds scorch and blue in hard afternoon sun, so a site with some afternoon shade holds the color better than full exposure. Swan Island times it at 90 days, an average mid season start, and rates it an excellent cut flower but not one for the show bench. Pinch at 12 inches and net it rather than staking every stem, because the whole point of this plant is the number of stems.