Why does the chrysanthemum grow to look like this?
The chrysanthemum is the recluse among flowers.
In Zhou Dunyi's view, the chrysanthemum waits until crisp autumn before blooming alone, not competing with the hundred flowers for splendor in spring, and it has the character to brave frost and snow, just like a hermit, hence "the recluse among flowers."
After my flowers bloom, the hundred flowers die. Image: katorisi
In today's globalized world, when we admire flowers in autumn, the situation of "after this flower blooms, there are no more flowers" does not occur, but the custom of admiring chrysanthemums in golden autumn still remains in our culture. Spring orchids, summer lotuses, autumn chrysanthemums and winter plums are also the most common flowers representing the seasons.
Chrysanthemums are by no means all the same
But to say that Chinese people love chrysanthemums, it doesn't quite seem to be the case either. "The love of the chrysanthemum, after Tao, is seldom heard of" seems to still hold true today. Apart from the traditional custom of admiring chrysanthemums during the full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the occasion when ordinary people can reliably see chrysanthemums is probably only when visiting graves. Yet leafing through ancient texts, one does not find literati using autumn chrysanthemums to express mourning. What is going on? Becausethe custom of the chrysanthemum as a "graveyard flower" was only introduced from Europe in modern times, it is "imported."
The most classic form of the chrysanthemum is the yellow chrysanthemum of "the whole city wearing golden armor," but as a famous flower witha cultivation history of more than 1,600 yearsin China, the chrysanthemum of course acquired all kinds of colors and forms after artificial breeding. The book Huajing records 154 chrysanthemum cultivars, and with advances in cultivation techniques, there are now, by incomplete count, more than 7,000 chrysanthemum cultivars, many of which can be called immortal blooms and exotic flowers.
The classic yellow chrysanthemum. Image: Prenn / Wikipedia
But the various strange "chrysanthemums" in flower shops are not all today's protagonist, Chrysanthemum morifolium. In fact,the various "chrysanthemums" commonly seen in flower shops are merely relatives in the same family as the chrysanthemum, such as daisies, cinerarias, gerberas and cornflowers. Basically, only around Qingming can one see large quantities of white chrysanthemum and yellow chrysanthemum cut flowers for sale.
Swipe to see the pictures, a massive face-blindness scene! Images 1-5: jam343/ flickr; Kiran Jonnalagadda / flickr; Hedwig Storch / Wikipedia; Tom.k; Fan Wen / wikimedia
Truechrysanthemum cultivars are generally distinguished by petal type, and are divided into flat petals, spoon petals, tube petals, osmanthus petals and anomalous petals. But although they are called "petals," the chrysanthemumis notcomposed of petalsas a single flower, but rather a large number of petal-likeflorets combined into one flower headthat performs the duties of an ordinary flower, and this is also one of the basic characteristics of plants in the Asteraceae family.
Large image: Masaki Ikeda / Wikipedia; small image: Botanical Illustrated Guide; chart: Sydney
Among the five petal types of chrysanthemums, the one ordinary people are most familiar with is the flat-petal type. In this type, most of the ray florets on the outer edge of the flower head have only the basal less than one-fifth portion in tube form, that is, the classic "ligulate flower" shape, while the florets near the center sometimes are completely closed tubes. The chrysanthemum cut flowers used for grave visits at Qingming are generally of this type.
A classic flat-petal white chrysanthemum. Image: cargocollective.com
Most of the remaining chrysanthemum petal types are seen only at specialized chrysanthemum exhibitions. Among them, the anomalous petal type is the one ordinary people encounter least, and is mainly divided intodragon-claw type, burr type and cut-velvet type. The basic petal types of the florets are still flat, spoon and tube forms, but at the tips they respectively show claw-like splitting, attachment of burr-like structures, and broad short flat petal tips in a finely split shape.
The rarely seen needle-tube type of tube-petal chrysanthemum. Image: Pea's Botanical Illustrated Guide
Chrysanthemums of various forms at a chrysanthemum exhibition. Image: Pea's Botanical Illustrated Guide
Japanese chrysanthemum exhibitions even have dolls made from chrysanthemums, "kiku ningyo." Image: Jnn / Wikipedia
The flower of the Japanese imperial family
The chrysanthemum has long been renowned in China as one of the top ten famous flowers, but its status is even higher in the neighboring country of Japan. When it comes to Japan in terms of flowers, the first thing most people think of is cherry blossoms, and few may know thatthe representative flower of the Japanese imperial family is the chrysanthemum. In the Kamakura period, Emperor Go-Toba had the chrysanthemum crest forged onto swords and established it as the imperial emblem, namely the "sixteen-petal double chrysanthemum crest" on today's imperial flag. A similar emblem appears on the cover of Japanese passports, but on closer observation one finds that the emblem on Japanese passports is only a sixteen-petal chrysanthemum crest, with one fewer layer of petals than the imperial family crest.
On the Japanese imperial flag is the sixteen-petal double chrysanthemum crest. Image: Zscout370 / Imperial Household ceremonial regulations
The design on Japanese passports is different. Image: Muttley / Wikipedia
Because the chrysanthemum is the representative flower of the Japanese imperial family,ordinary people generally do not casually use or wear it, and the Japanese public's fondness for chrysanthemums is not high, far less than the popularity of cherry blossoms. Even so, Japan's horticultural circles have still cultivated quite a few chrysanthemum cultivars, and many of them look quite charming, such as the round and adorable ping-pong chrysanthemum.
The ping-pong chrysanthemum is a commonly used cut flower. Image: chrysanthemums.info
From sacred flower to graveyard flower
Apart from China and Japan, few countries value chrysanthemum culture.Chrysanthemums in Western countries were basically all introduced from China, and their introduction to Europe should at the earliest have been in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. It is recorded that as early as 1688 a Dutch merchant introduced them to Europe. Later, in the 18th century the Frenchman Louis Biltard, and in the 19th century the British botanist Fortune, respectively introduced chrysanthemum cultivars from China to cultivate in their own countries, which allowed the chrysanthemum to spread relatively widely in Europe. Not long after Fortune's introduction, the chrysanthemum spread to the United States, and only then did the chrysanthemum complete its worldwide spread.
But although the chrysanthemumrepresents nobility, auspiciousness and longevity in classical Chinese culture, after being introduced to Europe it somehow went awry and became a "demon flower." At the timeEuropeans generally believed that the chrysanthemum was a "graveyard flower", and there was even a circulated saying that it was planted in graveyards by witches, which is both laughable and exasperating.
And the culture of using chrysanthemums as funeral flowers, when some chrysanthemum cultivars flowed back from Europe to China, also entered China at the same time, makingwhite chrysanthemums and yellow chrysanthemums flowers for expressing remembrance and mourning, which is basically a state everyone accepts. Giving someone a bouquet of daisies will make them feel you are praising their pure temperament, but giving someone a bouquet of chrysanthemums and you might just get chased out the door.
A single white chrysanthemum offered to the deceased. Image: Hakim / chrysanthemumspics
This article is the 273rd article of the 4th year of the Species Calendar, from Species Calendar author @ArcherEmiya.
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