March of the mums
THE Chinese developed more than 100 varieties of chrysanthemums by the early Middle Ages. A recent festival in Iran, celebrating that country’s emerging cut-flower industry, boasted 700 types of the flower. The mum’s combination of substance and grace has inspired ancient poetry, traditional kimono patterns and contemporary tattoos.
Still, not everyone loves a mum. A French etiquette book warns that it is irretrievably gauche to bring chrysanthemums to your dinner hostess. Anyone who has ever despaired of making a graceful arrangement from three stiff stems of pincushions or daisies-on-a-stick will be tempted to agree.
In much of Western Europe, chrysanthemums are primarily funeral flowers, but a bigger strike against them may be their unchic, mass-market availability. A Westwood florist says her customers spurn mums as grocery store blooms.
The same characteristics that put off detractors inspire admirers. Adaptable in growth, indefatigable in the vase, chrysanthemums are the good soldiers of the flower world. They flourish -- deep green and tight-budded -- during the hottest summers yet can flower in the midst of snowdrifts that would turn less intrepid blooms to mush.
In China, where the plant is called ju, it’s considered a symbol of nobility; in Japan, as kiku, it’s the emblem of the emperor. Both attributions reflect the plant’s iron constitution.
Our name, chrysanthemum -- bestowed by Carl Linnaeus when the plant was brought to Europe in the 18th century -- comes from the Greek word for gold. It’s an accurate reflection of the flower’s original color, but a better name might be “here comes the night.” Chrysanthemums’ bud-setting phase is said to be light-sensitive, but the plant’s hormones are actually responding to the hours of darkness. Humans may find autumn’s cool and lengthening nights depressing, but to a chrysanthemum, they’re a signal to bloom like crazy.
This propensity for bursting into one, big bush full of color has inspired growers with an artistic bent on both sides of the Pacific. In Japan, fall festivals have long been enlivened by life-size chrysanthemum dolls.
Using techniques developed in the 19th century, master craftsmen twist living plants through a bamboo framework, arranging blooms and leaves in the intricate patterns of formal kimonos. The dolls are displayed in tableaux re-creating scenes from classical Japanese drama.
A somewhat less laborious form of painting with flowers is practiced by Bill Doepkens, a Maryland farmer who annually grows a chrysanthemum mural. Planted in May, the flowers emerge in the fall to form a field-size image. Past years have produced a swan and a peacock with a tail of 2,500 mums.
Los Angeles area residents will have a chance to enjoy other forms of mum art at two festivals: the Chrysanthemum Show this weekend at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden at Cal State Long Beach, and the Japanese Garden Festival to be held Nov. 3 and 4 at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge.
Exhibitions of prize-winning blooms, some as big as softballs, will be sponsored by local chrysanthemum societies, and landscape displays will feature individual plants trained as blooming fans, trees and waterfall-like cascades.
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NEW ENGLAND’S fall foliage may be more famous, but the rich and subtle tapestry formed by thousands of chrysanthemums offers an equally dramatic and possibly more poetic salute to the changing season.
The contrast between the flower’s brilliance and the year’s decay was appreciated early. Chinese poet Qu Yuan (circa 339-278 BC) suggested that readers “take autumn’s chrysanthemums falling petals as food in the evening.” His advice may not be as melancholy as it sounds: The petals remain an ingredient in Chinese cooking.
Historians aren’t sure which came first in the mum’s popularity: the flowers or the leaves. Both are edible. Chinese herbalists recommend blossoms of yellow chrysanthemum as a calming tea, while grocers in Little Tokyo sell packages of the fresh leaves, called shungiku, as a vegetable. Used in soup or salad, they taste like a fruitier spinach.
Napoleon’s army had another reason to be grateful to the flower. One variety, the pyrethrum, or painted daisy, contains a powerful insecticide. Traveling the Silk Road from Asia to the Middle East, this ancient form of chrysanthemum was cultivated from Japan to Dalmatia. Dried, the flowers were used by French soldiers to combat their most persistent enemy, lice.
Current crops more likely come from Kenya and Tasmania. As a naturally occurring pesticide, pyrethrum remains a boon to organically inclined gardeners. Toxic to aphids, thrips and other tiny invaders, it breaks down quickly in sunlight once the job is done.
It’s not always easy to know what is -- and what is not -- a chrysanthemum. Botanists have removed the pyrethrum from the category along with the brilliant white, saucer-size Shasta daisy, Chrysanthemum maximum.
Even within the florists species, now known as C. x morifolium, there’s amazing variation. Contemporary chrysanthemum breeders recognize 13 classes of bloom shape, including the near-spherical incurve, the skinny-petaled spider and the aptly named brush and thistle. A bunch of the last, recently available at Trader Joe’s, might please the pickiest Parisian.
Bronze and oddly graceful, despite their angularity, they look like miniature witch’s brooms. Modern as they seem, they aren’t new. According to Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society, pots of similarly shaped flowers have long graced the grounds of Buddhist temples.
What is new is a yellow and orange spider mum called ‘Descanso.’ Introduced by King’s Mums of Clements, Calif., this saucer-size sunburst honors not just the gardens but also the Descanso Chrysanthemum Society, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.
A visit to a recent meeting left no doubt that growing prizewinning mums requires constant vigilance. Plants must be staked and restaked during the growing season as well as regularly relieved of excess buds. Members were also reminded that judges deduct points for any aphid caught lurking on a leaf.
Besides tweezing, clipping, wedging and primping dozens of their best flowers for the National Chrysanthemum Society’s Nov. 2 judging, members will act as hosts for the society’s convention, to be held in Pasadena the same weekend.
Fashions change in mums, as elsewhere. A 1911 chrysanthemum handbook names the ‘Japanese,’ a gracefully tousled mop of irregular-length petals, as the most popular flower type. Today the trend in show chrysanthemums is for flowers that are manicured and symmetrical, according to Ron Hedin, Descanso Chrysanthemum Society member and sometime judge.
The Japanese would seem to agree. This month the New York Botanical Garden is exhibiting chrysanthemums grown in collaboration with Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo. Featured are single bushes clipped and pruned to present every one of hundreds of blossoms at exactly the same fullness and height.
More inspiring perhaps is a second glance at the Descanso society members. All seem to qualify as senior citizens; some are over 80. Sturdy, long-blooming, graceful under pressure -- the virtues of their favorite flower have apparently rubbed off.
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Fall shows of color
A variety of chrysanthemums will be on display and for sale at two local shows:
Cal State Long Beach: Chrysanthemum Show runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden, off Earl Warren Drive. Adults, $7, seniors, $6, children 12 and under, free. (562) 985-8885, www.csulb.edu/~jgarden/.
Descanso Gardens: Chrysanthemum Society Show and Sale coincides with the Japanese Garden Festival running 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Nov. 3 and 4 at the park, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Canada Flintridge. Free with regular Descanso admission of $2 to $7. (818) 949-4200, www.descansogardens.org.
