November Flowers

I've been seeing these here and there about town the past few days, but I haven't been able to identify them yet. Not immortalized enough to be in the haiku flower book; not tasty enough to make the edible plant guide; not pedestrian enough to grace the field flower guide.

**** after writing these lines I decided to do a quick Google blekko search in Japanese — don't know why I didn't start with that — and quickly found out who they are: koutei dahlia (皇帝ダリア) or Dahlia imperialis, native to Central America.