What happened to my blooms?

I'm just guessing that it is some type of virus. The blooms in these photos ended up looking like yours. But from what I can see it doesn't appear that your foliage is damaged like mine. I ended up cutting this one to the ground. It grew all the way back with nice green leaves but by then it was too late in the year for blooms. I was afraid to save any tubers for fear of a virus. If there are other plants close you might want to consider getting rid of this one before something spreads. Wish I could be of more help. Hopefully, someone else will know.

I've spent a lot of time fishing the lakes and rivers around Sevierville and Rogersville. Beautiful country, great fishing and Dollly Parton!

I am in no way expert here. Maybe someone else with personal experience can chime in. Something similar to your dahlia happens to my roses. I think it maybe due to thrip damage. If you shake the flower onto a white sheet of paper, you should see little bugs moving around. Here is a link for treating plants infested with thrips.

https://greenmethods.com/thrip...

@psudan @kousa thanks for the input. I think tomorrow I will check for the thrip bugs if I don't find any I will cut the flowers off since the foliage shows no damage I'll let it stay.

I moved here in 96 from vermilion Ohio and I absolutely love it. I used to fish all the time but now with a family in a very bad gardening habit and beekeeping. We just swim in the rivers and lakes. I hope someday to take my kids up north to see Lake Erie.

@ plantcollector

Have you had huge amount of rain and don't have great drainage?

Here is a Pic someone posted on another site that she said was caused by flooding.

Dahlias are susceptible to a variety of viruses, but they pretty much always affect the leaves of the plants. I would cout off those ugly flowers, and wait for the next round and see if they look normal.

@mandolls I think you might be right. I have them in riased beds that doesn't drain as good as I would like. I didn't realize it would effect the blooms like that.

I was really curious about it since I have never seen it before, so I asked about it for you on another forum and was told by a Florida grower that he has had it happen too. Just cut off anything that is icky and they will likely recover.

I suspect it won't happen regularly. This kind of fungus is going to be really dependent on warmth and humidity.

If your drainage was really terrible, the tubers would have rotted - this is more about to much heat and humidity making just the right conditions for the fungus to happen.

@mandolls thanks for looking into that for me. It has been hot and humid for about the past month. I did cut all the flower heads off today hopefully the new ones will come out all right