From “Chrysanthemum” in Garden Flowers by Matthias Hermann:
“The name chrysanthemum (golden flower) comes from the characteristic golden-yellow color which most species had, at least in the primitive types. But cultivation has so modified this genus that the yellow color has completely disappeared in a great many varieties. As typical of real chrysanthemums, there is the old garden chrysanthemum which came from Mediterranean Europe, it is a perennial plant cultivated as an annual. One variety with completely white flowers was obtained which is very hardy and comes up in any position. Its very abundant flowers bloom successively from June until the frosts.
“The most remarkable of all is the Indian chrysanthemum. This beautiful species has a considerable number of varieties, which differ in the size of the plant, the shape, sizes and color of the flowers and flowering season; among these are the common garden chrysanthemum with wide flowers and long spreading rays whose stems and flower-heads can reach enormous proportions, and the Christmas flower, which is interesting because of the strange arrangement of its florets.”
From “Transplanted Beauty” in The Exhilaration of Flowers by Jean MacKenzie:
“Magenta Mums.”
Sloppy abbreviated speech?
“Magenta Chrysanthemums.”
Translated from the Greek —
magenta “golden flowers.”
Startling confusion of colours….
I was given some plants to brighten
the southern bed in front of my house.
They gratefully flourished.
Shoots from those early plants
gladden the gardens
of many relatives and friends.
Like autumnal Painted Daisies,
magenta rays encircle golden centres
above multitudes of aromatic lobed leaves.
Hello!
Autumn seems like the shortest season of the year here in the middle of Georgia, one that flies by with a few flashes of traditional fall color in a matter of days. Unless we get cold weather in September (which is rare) or some freezing days in October (which is nearly as rare) then Atlanta’s trees don’t turn until mid- to late-November, then they promptly drop all their leaves. Delightfully, though, the few temperate weeks of November leading up to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays seem to give autumn mums and daisies a big boost — so I go mum-hunting around that time and save most of the photos for January. Then, during the most colorless time of the year, I still get to work with nature’s tints and tones for a few weeks before those of early spring start to appear.
I posted some of the mums I photographed on these trips around Thanksgiving (see Pink Daisies, Pink Mums (1 of 3), Pink Daisies, Pink Mums (2 of 3), and Pink Daisies, Pink Mums (3 of 3)) but saved the rest (about 200 images) to share throughout this month. Those in this post were a new discovery for me: I had never seen these richly magenta-colored flowers on any previous trips, and found them randomly scattered, somewhat hidden, among some red and orange mums I’ll be posting later.
In addition to their hot magenta color, this variant — most likely of Indian Chrysanthemum or Chrysanthemum indicum — has a noteworthy design, which becomes more evident as you scroll down through the views I used when taking the photographs. As the petals radiate from the centers of the flowers, the throat of each petal is pure white, a visual effect that looks a little like spokes of a wheel. If you are a bee, you might see this as a map to the yellow center of the flower: the contrast between magenta and white could lead you to treat this arrangement as a landing strip for the disc florets, the round cluster of yellow flowers where little bees like to forage and pollination wants to occur.
Magenta is fairly common in flowers, though we’ll often find shades of pink, light purple, violet, fuchsia, and related colors mixed throughout a flower we see as (or refer to as) magenta. This particular mum is one of the very few flowers I’ve photographed where Lightroom detects magenta only (other than white) among the flower petal colors. Many of the flowers in the three previous posts I linked to above appear to be similarly colored, but in those Lightroom also detects purple, red, and splashes of blue along with magenta — which is what I usually find among flowers displaying magenta-like colors.
If I analyze the colors more closely with something like the ColorSlurp utility, the same thing happens, though this tool identifies the color as heliotrope magenta — heliotrope being a color that has a cultural history of its own. Heliotrope’s Victorian background is described in The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair, where the author explains how it came to be used as a color of mourning in the late 1800s, representing later stages of mourning or to show respect for more distant relatives for whom black mourning colors were considered too stark. I supposed it’s no surprise, then, that I found these among the monuments at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens — though I can’t help but wonder if their placement there was as an intentional remembrance, or if someone just liked the rich color and spoke-wheel design.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
