Dapper I have no idea. But after your post and digging up a couple of my 'slackers' I found a sort of pale purple/white bulbous projection on the 'root' end of a tuber. I've never seen anything like it, so I would like to hear from anyone who has seen this/these things before too. It looked like fresh growth. The tuber is healthy feeling, roots developing, but no eye/growth except for the purple/white invader.

yup thats what i got! I wonder if i could use the tubers it grows and get flowers next year....does the tuber need to grow a plant to ever make another eye?

Newbie to Dahlias. I'd like to know the answer to this because on of my non-sprouters is doing the same thing. No eyes but this.

Annie: When you dug it up did you yell at it?? A reliable source suggested that........

Hee Hee Granny!
It is such a slow, tedious cold wet Spring- oh excuse me SUMMER, that I am yelling at everything I can see. By now, I have forgotten which tuber had the bulbous purply/white growth, but if I find it, I'm yelling at it. To date, no little men in white coats have driven up with a paddy wagon. And when I read about how hot and humid everyone is, scorching in the searing temps I yell at the computer too! We have a chance to crack 60 here today- whoo hoo. When I read about buds or blooms already showing up, I throw viscious hisses toward the computer monitor and there's no telling what will happen when one of you dahlia enthusiasts posts a photo. It could be the last straw...

I have dug up and tried to save about 15 slacking/rotting tubers so far- I quit counting, it's too depressing. About half of those have since died and a mystifying number of them were yellows! Yellows of every shape and size. Hiss. At one point I was going to swear off dahlias ever again and grow peas and beans like normal people.

But I got over it : ) because hope springs eternal.

Oh, oh, Poochella- I thought normal people grew dahlias & the weirdos grew peas & beans...rats!!

OK?????? So does tha make me a wierdo reformed to normal? I have grown peas and beans for years and just have gotten the dahlia bug this year..lol.
I find screaming to be soothing on the soul if not the tubers ;). I am so lucky to have 5 acres. Keeps the paddy wagon from visiting!
I am waiting for the warm weather, It has been a hot winter nad a cool spring summer, Dont figure thats Washington for ya.

Kathy

And what does this make the husband who grows a row of beans along with his 8-10 thousand dahlias-- just slightly abnormal.... or all the way nutz??? >:)

I think that the problem with your tubers growing tubers and roots but no stem is that they didn't have an eye on them. Tubers will continue to grow but they will never sprout a stem if they don't have a piece of old stem with an eye on it. Sorry. Perhaps someone could experiment and find a way to graft a sprout of stem into the eyeless tuber.