Chrysanthemum morifolium Seeds | Florists’ Chrysanthemum
LATIN NAME: Chrysanthemum morifolium
COMMON NAME: Florists’ Chrysanthemum
Plant Profile
The florists’ chrysanthemum is a complex, hexaploid perennial of the daisy family, with a history of cultivation in China that runs back more than two thousand years. It grows from a woody base into an upright plant forty to one hundred and fifty centimetres tall, with deeply lobed, dark green leaves covered in fine white hairs.
It carries flower heads from two to twenty centimetres across, in a range of forms that includes single daisies, buttons, spoons, spiders and globes. The colours run from white and yellow through every shade of pink, bronze and red, but not true blue. In its native China it flowers in autumn, and the flowering is controlled by day length rather than by temperature.
Science & Biotechnology
The cultivated chrysanthemum is a hybrid complex rather than a single wild species, and its origin is usually traced to crosses between Chrysanthemum indicum and Chrysanthemum vestitum, with contributions from other Chinese species. It is hexaploid, with 54 chromosomes, which is part of why it is so variable and so easy to breed.
Flowering is a short-day response: the plant initiates buds when the night exceeds about eleven hours, and growers control the calendar with blackout cloth and with night-break lighting, which is how chrysanthemums are available in flower every week of the year. The flower heads are built from many florets, and the forms that gardeners prize, the anemone, the spider and the spoon, are the result of mutations that change the shape of individual florets.
Uses & Benefits
The chrysanthemum is grown as a garden perennial, as a cut flower and as a pot plant, and in Asia it is also a crop. The dried flowers are brewed as a tea, usually with a little sugar or with goji berries, and they are used in Chinese medicine for headache and for sore eyes. The young leaves of related species are eaten as a vegetable, under the name tong hao.
The plant has a further importance that is easy to forget: the pyrethrum insecticides were developed from Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium, a close relative, and the pyrethrins are still used in organic farming. The garden chrysanthemum itself contains much lower levels of those compounds. In Japan the plant is a national symbol, and the imperial throne is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Growing from Seed
Chrysanthemum seed is best sown in late winter at 16-18 °C on the surface of a light compost, pressed in but not covered. Germination takes two to three weeks. The seedlings are variable, since the parent is a hybrid, so named cultivars must be propagated by cuttings or division.
Prick out the seedlings when small and grow them on cool and bright to keep them compact. Pinch the growing tips twice, in May and June, to make a bushy plant, and stop pinching by mid-July so that the buds have time to form. Plant out in rich, moist, well-drained soil in full sun, and feed with a high-potash fertiliser from August. Lift and divide the clumps every two years, and take cuttings in spring from the new shoots at the base.
Our Take
A plant with two thousand years of breeding behind it, and a flower that will grow in almost any garden. Pinch it twice and feed it in August.
Related Reading
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