At the National show, I spent over an hour discussing the definition of the "informal" decorative dahlia. Mostly it was with a nice person from the Eastern part of the USA and we disagreed as to whether the current classification description in the Classification book really described what an informal decorative dahlia should look like. I pointed out that if you did a line drawing of a ball dahlia we all would recognize the form. The same with a semi cactus dahlia. and so forth. However, informal decorative dahlias do not have one desired form that could be put into a line drawing. Most everyone has forgotten that they took out the "twisted, curled or wavy" requirement and now only it has the word "may" be twisted, curly, or wavy and this change will include many more flowers into the classification. Meanwhile here is a picture of an informal decorative flower.
