The Aztecs used dahlia as a treatment for epilepsy.
This was discovered through a document that was found just 60 years after the coming of Columbus in 1929. It was a herbal document that had been written in the Latin script.
Dahlias arrived in Europe a little late. When Lord and Lady Holland visited and stayed in Spain between 1800 and 1805, lady Holland came across the beautiful dahlia in Spain.
She took it back to England with her when they had already been in Spain for almost 15 years. Spanish botanists had found it growing wild on the sandy hillsides of Mexico. During the destruction of the potato crop of France in the 1840s, scientists had considered dahlias as an alternate source of food.
It has been named after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl and is the official flower of the city of Seattle.
