Chrysanthemum indicum Seeds | Wild Chrysanthemum
LATIN NAME: Chrysanthemum indicum
COMMON NAME: Wild Chrysanthemum
Plant Profile
Wild Chrysanthemum is a bushy perennial of East Asia, half a metre to a metre tall, with deeply cut, aromatic leaves and loose clusters of small golden-yellow daisies through late summer and autumn. It spreads steadily into a rounded clump by short runners and stands cold and poor soil without complaint.
It is one of the wild parents of the cultivated chrysanthemum, and in China it grows on hillsides, thickets and roadsides across much of the country. In the garden it fills the late-season gap when most perennials have finished, and its flowers carry the same faint medicinal scent as the rest of the genus.
Science & Biotechnology
Genetic work places Chrysanthemum indicum among the core ancestors of the garden chrysanthemum, whose two thousand years of breeding have mixed several wild species. Its flowers follow the daisy family’s plan of ray florets around a disc, and its late flowering is a daylength response that breeders of the cultivated forms have long manipulated.
The species is also a study subject for its yellow pigments, carotenoids and flavonoids that give the blooms their colour and hold interest for food-chemistry research. Its pollen is a food source studied in the chemistry of bee diets, and the plant’s autumn flowering places it among the last substantial nectar stations of the year in its range. Its aromatic leaves owe their scent to a volatile oil chemically close to that of the cultivated forms, and the comparison has been used in chemotaxonomic studies of the genus.
Uses & Benefits
In China the flowers are gathered wild and dried as Ye Ju Hua, a tea and wash with a cooling reputation, and the plant is a nectar source for late-season bees and hoverflies. In the garden it is a reliable autumn daisy for a wild border or meadow-style planting.
It is tougher and smaller-flowered than the garden chrysanthemum and asks no staking, no feeding and no lifting, which is the honest version of its famous descendant. The dried flowers also serve as a yellow dye on wool, a minor craft use the genus has carried for centuries. In late autumn the seed heads stand through the first frosts, and goldfinches work them the way they work the teasels.
Growing from Seed
Sow the seed in spring on the surface of a fine compost and press it in without covering; light aids germination, which takes one to three weeks.
Keep it just moist at ordinary room temperature and give the seedlings full light; they grow quickly and are ready to move within a month.
Pot the seedlings singly and plant them out forty centimetres apart in full sun and well-drained soil; divide the clumps every third year in spring to keep them vigorous. In dry summers give a bucket of water a week during bud, since drought shortens the flowering and the leaves lose their scent.
Our Take
The wild original of the chrysanthemum: small golden daisies, aromatic leaves and an autumn nectar supply, with none of the fuss of its descendants.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Wild Chrysanthemum: