Fall-blooming chrysanthemums are a revered flower and a celebrated symbol of strength and longevity in Chinese and Japanese cultures because of the beauty they provide late into the year. By the same token, they are used as a lovely and bittersweet metaphor for the winding down of life.

This symbolism is taken a step further to its literal end in some European countries where mums are associated with death and are used as funeral flowers.

These days, my attitude about the floral harbinger of fall is closer to the idealized image that chrysanthemums have in Asian cultures, though there was a memorable day late in my junior year of high school when a chrysanthemum broke my heart.

As a member of the newspaper staff, I had access to the many yearbooks our adviser collected from schools across the state for use as examples with the yearbook staff. When the University of Northern Iowa yearbook appeared one day, I greedily flipped to the sports section for glimpses of my track star boyfriend who had gone away to college that year. I found him all right - all smiles in a full-page photo with his arm around a pretty coed wearing a big spider mum with her purple and gold at the homecoming game.

The mum told the tale. The saying "mum’s the word" has nothing to do with chrysanthemums; rather, it refers to a line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI: "Seal up your lips and give no words but mum." That’s exactly what I did.

I haven’t been to a homecoming football game in many years, so I don’t know whether people still wear chrysanthemum corsages, but about the time the school buses start to rumble and roll, mums appear for sale everywhere as the garden’s last hurrah, and what a hurrah it is. Nationally, potted and garden mums have a wholesale value approaching $200 million in this country. Americans love chrysanthemums, and what’s not to love about adding big blooming color in an otherwise fading landscape? It’s a makeover that never goes out of style.

Chrysanthemums should ideally be planted in the spring and pinched back repeatedly until the end of July for a mounded mass of blooms. Though many will grow as perennials, fall-planted mums often don’t over-winter because they lack the established root system needed to sustain them through dormancy. If grown as a perennial, they tend to dwindle after two or three years and can be refreshed by digging the crowns and dividing them.

Spoon, quill, spider and brush are four of the 13 chrysanthemum bloom classifications used by the National Chrysanthemum Society to differentiate between the thousands of cultivars of C. dendranthema. Each chrysanthemum bloom is made up of two types of florets, the inner disks and the outer rays.

Chrysanthemums originated in China, though estimates vary widely on just how far back they can be traced. They appear in Japanese written records somewhat later, but in 910 A.D., mums were named Japan’s national flower and became an imperial symbol. In this country, mums were first mentioned as part of an 1827 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society exhibition, though they were surely grown earlier.

The Chinese celebrate Chongyang on the ninth day of the ninth month, which is today on our calendar. However, on the lunar calendar, it will be observed on Oct. 19. Legend dictates that the best way to celebrate is to do a little mountain climbing carrying a spray of zhuyu flowers and to drink chrysanthemum tea. Traditional celebrations are waning, and in 1989, the Chinese government declared it a senior citizens day.

A debate has been waging in Chinese newspapers about flower plans for the 2008 Olympics. Roses and chrysanthemums, both emblems of Beijing, have been chosen, but detractors point to the fact that some foreign guests associate the flower with death. Supporters pooh-pooh that notion in the belief that visitors should embrace the floral customs of their hosts. When in Rome …

Chinese poetry contains many references to chrysanthemums and the flower’s associations with longevity and transience. A few mum petals in a glass of wine were thought to extend one’s life, and a little wine also loosened the pen to record poignant observations about floral symbolism.

In the fourth century A.D., T’ao Ch’ien wrote a poem titled "Idle Living," a few lines of which eloquently illustrate this and also evoke a feeling of fall.

"The air is penetrating, the day is bright.

The departing swallow leaves no shadow;

The returning wild goose brings a lingering cry.

Wine can wash away a hundred woes,

And chrysanthemums set a pattern for old age."

Advertisement