Coseytown Morgan

Introducing Coseytown Morgan! I’ve been in hot pursuit of this carefully hand selected apricot sport of Coseytown Dexter for years and am pleased to now formally announce that we’ve finally caught him!

While I personally love a variegated dahlia, I know yellow (Dexter) is not everyone’s cup of tea - so when he sported apricot (Morgan), I was beyond thrilled. Coseytown Morgan is another powerhouse that possesses all the excellent plant traits of his ‘alter ego’ too, giving you bloom after bloom, week after week and retaining its closed center until frost arrives. Even if you don't harvest blooms weekly, this plant will remain attractive all summer.

Coseytown Morgan's stems are strong with solid blossom attachment. This is an incredibly strong, robust, upright plant too; rarely do I ever have to clean up broken lateral branches after a storm or night of high wind. Morgan is a no nonsense, no fuss dahlia. In a world of diva dahlias, growing Morgan is refreshing. The blooms do not continue to open after harvest, so harvest when the blooms are fresh and young. These blooms will consistently look amazing ALL season long. Additionally, tuber yields are abundant and consistent, with plump tubers having a high degree of toughness to withstand digging, dividing, and storing intact.

This ‘sport’ is a condition in which the color mutated into a new color within an existing cultivar. Coseytown Dexter's genetics, and that of any of its sports (yes - there have been many), still do shift on occasion. I have been repeatedly isolating the apricot one in hot pursuit of Coseytown Morgan over the last few years.

Plants that exhibited this color shift from yellow (Dexter) to apricot (Morgan) were intentionally labeled, dug, stored, and planted separately over multiple years. Each season, only plants that bloomed apricot were selected and replanted the following year. Last season (2023), 85% of the selected stock bloomed apricot, and plants exhibiting any other color were culled. Given the declining percentage of non-apricot blooms in the Morgan stock tracked over 3 years, I expect a single digit percentage of tubers harvested in the 2023 season will bloom yellow. Please accept this possibility when purchasing Morgan and remember it was grown from a previously blooming apricot plant. Give it a second season to see if yellow blooms revert back to apricot.

I have tried collecting seed from Dexter/Morgan for several years with no success. In 2023, I finally dissected blooms and discovered why! Seed maturation will be very rare for Morgan since it grows very few, if any, disc florets and its ray florets are sterile. No pollen and sterile ovaries mean this plant doesn’t have nature pushing it to let go of its petals. Bad for hybridizing, but amazing for cut flower customers and gardeners alike!