On ya Mum!
Well Mother’s Day might be well and truly over but the Chryssies aren’t yet! Two years ago I took Mum to a local nursery (well it’s a 45 minute drive… so it depends on your definition of local…) to buy her some flowers (which I did) but I also couldn’t help but come home with two pots of Chrysanthemums of my own (as you do!). I planted them out in pots by the front door and when they died off, gave them a dead head but was lazy about replanting the pots. I’m glad I was! They suffered great neglect (because I am firmly in the back door camp when it comes to going in and out of my house) and pretty much lived on whatever they could glean from the sky, but come the next year - boom! Maximum pink blooms again! Well, I was rather impressed by their hardiness so to reward them at the end of that season I freshened their potting mix, added a little fertiliser and even watered them occasionally over the following year and this year they’ve been even better!
Looks like the pots themselves could also do with some love…
I also have another chrysanthemum which has the palest pink flowers that I grew from some free cuttings on a local grow cart. It suffers even greater neglect and still puts on a show every winter (albeit a bit of a floppy show because they could probably do with staking..).
Chrysanthemums are in the Daisy (Asteraceae) family and are ‘short day plants’, which means that longer length nights as Autumn comes trigger their blooming. They’re usually pretty reliably in flower around Mother’s Day (second Sunday of May) but big nurseries cheat a little and use black out curtains to shorten the days earlier and make sure they’re in full bloom and ready to go on sale. (This is also how we have Poinsettias in flower at Christmas!). Chrysanthemums make great cut flowers and small posy can last for ages in a vase inside. They are also edible and the leaves, roots and flowers have been eaten and drunk in teas since they were first cultivated in China. Since then, the Japanese have also seen their beauty and even have a National Chrysanthemum Day. In fact, they’re so highly regarded in Japan that ‘The Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum’ is their most prestigious award!
