They are fine. Especially red or dark flowering cultivars send up red shoouts/ sprouts. As they get bigger they turn green but often a darker green than white or yellow cultivars.

Here's a photo of the variety, plus a shot of last year's tubers when they were sprouting normal green shoots.

linera is correct - the red will turn to green, don't worry.

I haven't seen tubers planted end down like that. Is that just to get them started? I have only ever seen them planted laying on their sides.

mandolls: I'm a rank beginner where Dahlia tubers are concerned.
This is just my 2nd year of replanting tubers.
The main reason I planted them them topside up, is to minimise any possible rotting of the cut and separated ends. Moulds are are-too-successful at colonising!

I think is a cultural or traditional issue. When I buy a bagged tuber here in Germany or Switzerland the instructions on the label are to plant it at a... depth ( upside up) it doesn' t say upright, it is just what you see on the pic and in books.

I ordered from Swan island/USA this spring and wondered about their method to plant them laying on their side.

Both works it seems, could not figure out pro or contra of each method.

Anioher topic is depth, I read a list of things to avoid when starting Dahlias.

The eyes grow/start better if they are covered by soil. ( omly it is difficult to find pots that size, or you put them at an angle into the pot...)

Thats interesting that European growers plant them like that. I didn't mean to say it was wrong, just that I hadn't seen it before. I pre-start all of my tubers in pots too. I use 4" pots, so larger tubers won't fit unless I chop them down to size - which is what I do. I occasionally have a mammoth tuber that news to be started in a 1/2 gallon pot, I have had great success cutting off up to 1/2 of the tuber if needed.

As I understand it, the depth of planting the tubers is figured on how tall the plant will grow. The taller the dahlia, the deeper it should be planted. The giant 6-8 ft plants could topple over if they were not planted 6", but the shorter 3 ft. plants are fine at 4" deep.

I have some loose tubers of 'Bishop of Llandaff' in my shed. Due partly to laziness, and a bad cold, I still haven't got round to planting them up.
A few have starting to sprout but, although the sprouts are greenish, one individual is red. The photo is not as sharp as I had wished, but the difference can be seen. Strange or what?

to get dahlias going earlier-particularly if they've suffered in storage) i make a compost heap(this year chicken scratch and alfalfa) in a wine barrel, cover with old potting soil and let it rip. linea swan island muy bueno-tens of thousands of dahlias magnificently grown. i had always thought the bigger the tuber mass the better-swan said to always plant single tubers-counter intuitive but they are right

That is quite interesting, differently coloured sprouts coming up.

If you could bother it would be interesting to see how they turn out when flowering, would mean label them now which had dark or pale shoots.

One explanation could be mutant bulb parts, sports, which do occure (during the last season probably), another misslabeling accidentally.

------
Good thing: as far as I have read, dark eyes/ stems are no symptom of a disease.

--------
Apart from that I would expect tubers of the same cultivar ( even genetic material? Was it one bulb which got divided later on?) to perfom similarly.

So keep watching and post a pic if the riddle is solved!

Bye, Lin

I've solved the mystery, although it wasn't really a mystery.
As 'linaria' suggested "misslabeling accidentally", not really - it was a case of no labelling at all!

I only had two varieties; one lot were stored in the basement, the others in the garden shed. I thought I was certain which was which.
A proper case of "egg on my face" :)

"i had always thought the bigger the tuber mass the better-swan said to always plant single tubers-counter intuitive but they are right"

In addition, most experienced growers will always pick the smaller to medium sized tuber to grow over a really large one of the same variety. The plants from the bigger tubers often don't produce as many tubers as the smaller tuber plants.

However, the flowers and plant of the same variety are the comparable regardless of the initial tuber size.