In the past, the dahlias are important because Chater discovers them and Lady Croom is proud to be the first in England to display them. In the present, the dahlias provide the evidence that disproves Bernard’s theory. Chater definitely didn’t die at Byron’s gun, because Hannah unearths the garden book that describes his discovery of the dahlia. Like the apple and the leaf, the dahlias are a product of the natural world, so they tie into the ideas of Romantic beauty, gardening, taming nature, and describing nature. Chater finds a place alongside Thomasina and Valentine as a describer of nature. Despite Noakes’s attempts to make the Sidley Park garden into a Gothic wilderness, only Chater deals with the true dangers of the wild.