Hi Al~ Thank you! That link you gave has some great info! If it is a deficiency wouldn't it affect other plants? I have 8 squash, other sunflowers, and a few other plants in the same bed. I know it's not herbicide injury, I have never sprayed or used any. The bed was prepared with home made compost from my parents, and a little bone meal and blood meal. I use a little MG fertilizer once or twice a week. The plant itself matches what the link suggests for boron, but the growing conditions don't quite match. I'll read it again and yell with questions. lol.. I'll have to read up a little on nutrient toxicity or phyto-toxins in the soil, I'm not real sure what they mean. It's loaded with flower buds, but the plant it's self is about 3' shorter than what it should be right now too. :-) Thanks! JJ

It might be the wrong kind of light. Are the leaves turning pink? You might consider changing your bulbs if the bulbs are very old. I do not grow under lights but I have seen one plant do that upward curling. That plant was at the edge of the lights and in sour soil. The plant recovered very quickly under proper lighting. Just a thought from someone who knows absolutely nothing. Maybe some of the people growing under lights will have a better suggestion. This post was edited by lucky123 on Tue, Sep 2, 14 at 12:36

I better try to get a better photo. I keep on thinking thrips. I used to have absolutely TONS of aphids on my roses,but the blooms seemed fine. Then,these nasty Oxythyrea funesta beetles invaded. In hopes to get rid of them, I started spraying a systemic insecticide,Confidor.It did nothing to stop the beetles(if anything, made them stronger!) but got rid of the aphids completely. Now, I have all these crummy looking blooms on some of my light coloured roses. I've completely stopped spraying insecticide; I've gotten the impression that my roses began to look worse once I started spraying. But I could see using a systemic via irrigation on specific plants,if it would be effective against the specific scoundrel that's doing the damage. I will try for a better photo,but it may have to wait for next year at this point; my rose season is basically over. regards and thanks, bart

Are they all like that? Do other dahlia in the same area produce similarly stunted flowers? If the answers are yes and no respectively, it looks like a somatic variation in that particular dahlia tuber. While I know a person or two who'd kill for that dahlia, you don't care for it--so remove it at season's end (or now) and don't use it again. If it's only on one part of the plant, remove that stem as close to the base as you can. I once had a Sky Angel (lavender with white accents) produce white with faint lavender accents at the tips. I chopped that branch off and discarded it. If all plants in the area do that, you may have a resource shortage in the soil, a disease there, or some sort of invader that warps the flowers.