‘Medalist’ New Variety Dahlia for 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games

Cultivation of 'Medalist', a new variety of dahlia began this month for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020. The people of Hanawa, a town in southern Fukushima Prefecture, hope that the flowers will be used for victory bouquets. And this is why the variety has been called Medalist. The people also want to encourage the evacuees of the Great East Japan Earthquake with the flowers symbolizing this town.

A planting ceremony for bulbs of the flowers was held on March 9 in a plastic greenhouse. Hanawa's government official said cultivation of the variety, which produces flowers of mixed red and gold colour, has fully begun. He said the flowers of this dahlia variety will bloom in June.

Hanawa began cultivating dahlias in 1998 with the objective of making it a tourism resource. It became very popular to use the fields for dahlia cultivation. In 2010, farmers shipped 40,000 dahlia blooms. The following year, the earthquake brought about fear of whether it was negatively impacted by the nuclear disaster. This was followed by a downward trend in the volume of dahlia production; it as also because of the ageing farmers. Hanawa, once again took up the challenge to boost their dahlia production for the Tokyo Games. They took up the Medalist variety as they felt that the shape and colour of the flowers look like gold medals.