From the Introduction to Garden Plants of Japan by Ran Levy-Yamamori and Gerard Taaffe:
“There are… significant historical difference between gardening in the East and the West. Japan does not have a history of botanical and horticultural exploration to match that of some European nations especially Britain and, more recently, the United States…. The traffic in plants was almost solely in the one direction, from Japan to the West.
“The Japanese did not need to go exploring far afield, seeking sea passages to spice islands, or new homes for breadfruit or rubber trees. For Japanese connoisseurs it was enough to nurture and enjoy native plants and their cultivars. Japanese nurserymen did not have to dispatch explorers to search for new species to assuage the insatiable appetite for novelties that drove so much of European and North American horticulture for three centuries.”
From “Herbaceous Plants” in Garden Plants of Japan by Ran Levy-Yamamori and Gerard Taaffe:
“Ajania pacifica (syn. Dendranthema pacificum). Japanese: iso giku. Distribution is limited between Cape Inubo in Chubu Prefecture and Cape Omae in Shizuoka Prefecture and on cliffs along Izu Peninsula directly above the sea, growing along the coast, beside roads, and on banks in poor soil. A rhizomatous perennial. Unusual because it has no ray flowers only tube flowers…. Flower heads small, 1.5 cm in diameter, tube flowers yellow, densely packed, numerous, each 5 mm in diameter. Grows in poor soil but good drainage is essential. Propagated by stem cuttings. Hardy to Zone 7….
“This flower has been long cultivated and is frequently used for making chrysanthemum dolls (kiku ningyo). Life-size historical figures are decorated with chrysanthemum flowers. Hirakata Park in Osaka puts on a magnificent display every autumn.”
Hello!
It was good that I still had a few batches of Aster family photos left to work on from trips I took to Oakland Cemetery in November and December 2025 — because 2026 so far hasn’t been very conducive to outdoor photography. Two Atlanta-style snowstorms (using that word loosely) bracketed by windy weeks of rare single-digit temperatures, and days and days (and days!) of rain kept The Photographer mostly indoors, and we are just this week shifting toward more seasonable conditions and temperatures. I noticed over the past couple of days that a plum tree across the street from my house has started producing flowers — casting a pink glow on the buildings around it — so that also means that some of the late winter/very early spring blooms are starting to make their appearance, and those at Oakland are already likely posing for upcoming photoshoots.
This is the first of two posts with photos of a distinctive chrysanthemum called Ajania pacifica, which — like Tanacetum coccineum that I’ve previously written about (see Technicolor Tanacetum (1 of 4)) — has undergone reclassification several times and can be found under the scientific names or synonyms Dendranthema pacificum and Chrysanthemum pacificum. It’s commonly known as the Gold and Silver Chrysanthemum, Silver and Gold Chrysanthemum, or Pacific Chrysanthemum — this last name connecting to “pacifica” or “pacificum” and to its native origins in regions on the Pacific Ocean, like Japan.
Its physical appearance is quite unlike many chrysanthemum-adjacent members of the Aster family, which tend to grow outward in low-lying branch segments that mass together and make it difficult to distinguish individual plants. Each Ajania pacifica plant, instead, looks like a wee shrub all on its own, with flowers that organize in compact clusters at the top of rows of large, flat leaves tinged with silver-white brushstrokes along their edges — coloration alluding to the “silver” component of two of its common names.
These characteristics make the plant easier to identify with precision, and the plants, when positioned closely together like this…
… produce a carpet of leaves and flowers that is dense and compact, like a cloud you might think you could walk on that attracts a large quantity of pollinators — some of which you can see (ladybugs, bees, and fritillaries) in the first photos below.
Each plant is quite sturdy on its own, as the stems are thick enough to support the large crown of flowers, which makes it especially suitable for the use noted in the second excerpt at the top of this post: “This flower has been long cultivated and is frequently used for making chrysanthemum dolls (kiku ningyo). Life-size historical figures are decorated with chrysanthemum flowers.” Click the link to kiku ningyo if you’d like to read more about the Chrysanthemum Doll Festivals, or click here to see some typical images.
The first excerpt above may seem unrelated to the second, but I paired these selections intentionally. As I dug into the history of chrysanthemums, I learned that they aren’t native to either the United States or most of Europe, despite how common they’ve become and the extent to which they’ve adapted beyond China, Japan, or other East Asia regions. This description of the one-way traffic of plants from Japan to Europe anchors us initially to European botanical expeditions, especially those that begin in the Victorian era and extend into the early twentieth century. To better understand both the botanical and cultural history of chrysanthemums, though, we need to shift our anchor from a Western or European perspective to an Eastern or Asian one, as the authors allude to in the second paragraph of that excerpt.
Chrysanthemums had been grown, bred, and become embedded in Asian culture for hundreds of years prior to being fetched by European explorers. The European (and later North American) Victorian era was one punctuated by boundless acquisition and cultural absorption of artifacts from “exotic” regions — plants among them — and a lot of the readily available research about native Asian plants tends to be presented from a Western or European perspective. Here, for example, is an excerpt from The Garden Triumphant: Victorian Garden Taste by David Stuart that explains the role of botanical expeditions as the driver of plant mobility between Asia and Europe:
“The Victorian flora was unique. It was unique in its richness, as well as for its newness. The most amazing welter of extraordinary plants poured into Britain from all over the world, whether orchids, waterlilies, or calceolarias (many from the jungles and prairies of South America), exquisite alpine plants from the mountains of Africa or Northern India, and wonderful garden plants that had already been cultivated for centuries in China and, even more especially, Japan. The speed of introduction was entirely new, too, though occasional new garden plants had been arriving at least since Roman times. There was a major burst of new introductions with the discovery of the Americas in the fifteenth century, and minor bursts following the development of trade links with the Orient in the sixteenth century, and China and India in the seventeenth. As European explorers, merchants and collectors began to move inland from the coasts on which they had established themselves, the interest in new garden plants expanded throughout the eighteenth century….
“A plant associated with one of the major ‘aesthetic’ vogues of the Victorian period is now in almost every garden. The chrysanthemum, though a garden plant in China and Japan since ancient times, first arrived in Europe in 1689 (these first plants were from Japan). Oddly, for the plants are usually pretty tough, the first introductions were soon lost, only to be reintroduced in 1789. The enthusiasm for them started about 1800, and soon reached ‘craze’ proportions…”
With its origins in the heyday of Victorian garden cemetery development, Oakland maintains fidelity to those Victorian origins with landscaping that includes not only various chrysanthemum species but a large (and expanding) variety of plants native to China, Japan, or other Asian regions. As new growth and flowering takes place each spring, the Asian influence is evident and explicit: blooms will appear on plants like anemone, azaleas, camellia, dogwoods, plums, and quince — to name just a few of those I photograph and write about here. Many of these plants have native origins in Asia and were swept into Europe and the United States in conjunction with plant exploration, so we can find historical and cultural connections that take us from ancient China and Japan, to Great Britain and other parts of Europe, to the Americas, and to Oakland Cemetery. As I photograph and write about these plants over the next few months, I’m planning to dig further into their Asian botanical history — a new area of research for me that I hope will present a more comprehensive picture of the threads connecting plants and their cultural significance across many more generations and geographic regions.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
