From “The Honourable and Imperial Flower” in Chrysanthemum (Botanical) by Twigs Way:
“There is a legend that the original ‘golden daisies of the Orient’ first arrived in Japan from China in a boat washed ashore on an island in the Japanese archipelago. Within the boat were twelve maidens and twelve boys, carrying a precious cargo of chrysanthemums which they were to trade for the Japanese herb of youth in order to save the life of their revered Chinese emperor. Finding the island uninhabited, the travellers settled down to build an empire and plant the chrysanthemums. As legends often do, this one contains both elements of truth and unanswered mysteries. The story correctly puts the birthplace of chrysanthemums in China and also rather neatly explains the tradition that the flowers were for centuries the exclusive possession of the Japanese emperor….
“However, once in Japan, by whatever means, the chrysanthemum was embedded in the heart of the cultural and political system. In the twelfth century the Japanese emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239) took the flower as his personal imperial symbol, and by the late thirteenth century it had become the official flower and symbol of the royal family, who from then onwards were said to inhabit the Chrysanthemum Throne. In the castle of Osaka in Kyoto, constructed by the Japanese leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/7–1598), is an apartment known as the Chrysanthemum Room or the Kiku-no-ma, which was used as a waiting room for guests. It is decorated with yellow and white chrysanthemums and autumn grasses on a gold background…. Soon everything associated with the rule of the country, from money to warships, had the chrysanthemum symbol embossed or printed upon it…”
From “My Father” in Cartwheel to the Moon: Poems by Emanuel di Pasquale:
My father worked at a mine where they
would make cement; they would break
large rocks and shatter them
into cement powder; it was all to help build houses,
my mother said….
My mother began telling me stories of my father
after he left — died, she said.
He didn’t leave. He stood still,
my mother said. We would visit him where he slept,
unseen, in silence. There was earth
and a white rock and a picture of him
with his large mustache on the rock.
I would speak to him, but he would
(couldn’t, my mother said) never answer.
We’d always bring flowers.
Every night he’d bring some flowers home.
He’d pick them from the meadows on his way home
from work, my mother told me.
Daisies, lilacs, marjoram.
And so we’d fill his grave with meadow flowers;
in November, on the Day of the Dead,
we’d bring white and yellow chrysanthemums….
Hello!
This is the first of three posts featuring more photographs of mums and daisies from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, taken just before the onset of our last winter. This post and the next two include a motley mix of flowers in shades of yellow and white, mostly chrysanthemums but with a few Shasta Daisies scattered about. PlantNet identifies five variants among these photos, including Chrysanthemum indicum, Chrysanthemum zawadzkii, Chrysanthemum × morifolium, and Leucanthemum × superbum — but we’ve resisted any attempt here to nail down the names for each individual photo, especially those like the first three where there are some of those, some of these, and some of that.
As suggested in the quotation at the top of this post, yellow and white mums are closest in color to early wild chrysanthemums. While defining “wild” botanically or historically presents a lot of challenges, another way to think of it is that variations like the magenta ones and the red ones I’ve previously posted (as well as some orange ones I’m still working on) did not exist in nature and are the products of centuries of plant breeding around the world, including in China, Japan, Europe, and the United States.
The actual mechanisms are, of course, botanically and biologically complex; but I have this sense of being immersed in the history of this fine and culturally significant plant when I look at these yellows and whites. They’re closer in color to their original ancestors, while those of more saturated colors represent “modern” history, or at least the history of the past couple of centuries. With that distinction in mind, though, notice how some of the white and yellow mums in this post contain swatches of red or orange, the past presence of which enabled botanists to selectively breed the plants to enhance and emphasize those colors and gradually shift the flowers from white or yellow to red, pink, and orange.
Thanks for taking a look!
