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About a month back I planted some dahlia and marigold seeds in a pot. It seemed unsuccessful till this sprout came up.

However, I'm not sure if it's actually something I grew or worth keeping.

Thoughts anyone?

Seedling

Bence Kaulics
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Shaz
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2 Answers2

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Seedlings are difficult to identify, but that certainly could be a dahlia. At least, I don't see anything that would rule it out. The general shape of the leaf is right, and so are the teeth along the edge. If it is a dahlia, when it grows new leaves, the leaf veins should become more indented on the newer foliage.

Here you can see some dahlia seedlings:

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Compare them to the foliage of this mature dahlia plant:

enter image description here image source

Notice that the mature leaves have more serrations, and the texture of the leaf is less spongy-looking and more thin, glossy and with slightly indented veins. Also, the mature leaves are compound.

I would suggest letting your seedling grow, and watch for it to develop normal dahlia leaf characteristics. As long as it does, I would assume it's a dahlia until it blooms and proves the case one way or the other.

csk
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  • Thank you so much for the information, it was really helpful and reassuring that I was not growing some random weed. I will look out and keep in mind the for the details as the plant grows. Honestly I don't know what a dahlia seedling is supposed to look like as this is my first attempt growing it from scratch and so far the internet has been my go-to reference – Shaz Feb 20 '21 at 14:19
  • @Shaz It still might be a random weed. That's the fun of growing plants from seed. If you haven't grown that plant before, you won't really know until it blooms if it's the plant you wanted. – csk Feb 20 '21 at 17:46
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Well it does not look like any of the three plants commonly known as marigold - it could well be a dahlia, but I'm surprised it has started growing at this time of year if you have this outdoors, unless you live somewhere warm.

Bamboo
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  • Yes I was surprised that to see a sprout as I've had horrid luck with planting flower seeds but since I've seen baby marigold shoots before I assumed they would either have to be a dahlia or some sort of seed based weed which blew into my pot from the way the leaves shot up. I actually do live in a tropical climate and it's at the peak of the heat wave weather currently. – Shaz Feb 20 '21 at 14:29