Chrysanthemum

Where it grows

Cultivated chrysanthemums originated in China, where they have been bred for over two thousand five hundred years; they reached Japan in the eighth century and Europe in the eighteenth. Modern commercial production centres on Colombia, Kenya, and the Netherlands, with Japan still leading specialist exhibition cultivation.

How to recognise it

Plants grow forty centimetres to a metre tall with deeply lobed, aromatic grey-green leaves. Composite flower heads come in dozens of officially classed forms: incurves, reflexes, anemones, spiders, spoons, pompons, and singles, in almost any colour. Bloom diameter ranges from two centimetre buttons to giant exhibition mums over twenty centimetres across.

Garden & cultural uses

The flower is the imperial emblem of Japan and the namesake of the Chrysanthemum Throne. In China it is one of the Four Gentlemen of classical painting. Petals of C. morifolium are dried for chrysanthemum tea, a cooling drink across East Asia, while Dalmatian C. cinerariifolium yields pyrethrum, the original natural insecticide.

In symbolism

In much of Europe chrysanthemums are reserved for grave decoration on All Saints’ Day, which is why a bouquet of mums has very different meanings in Tokyo and in Lyon.