The Imperial Flower of the East

The chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum and its cultivated forms, is a daisy-family flower of Chinese origin whose name means golden flower. In East Asia it is one of the most honoured of blooms. In China it is the flower of autumn and one of the Four Gentlemen of painting, an emblem of the noble scholar who keeps his integrity as the year declines, and of longevity: it flowers in the ninth month and is central to the Double Ninth Festival, when chrysanthemum wine was drunk for long life. In Japan the chrysanthemum is the flower of the emperor, giving its name to the Chrysanthemum Throne, and a stylised sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum is the imperial seal.

A relative of the garden chrysanthemum, Tanacetum cinerariifolium, the Dalmatian pyrethrum daisy, is the natural source of pyrethrin, one of the oldest and still most widely used plant-derived insecticides, extracted commercially since the nineteenth century and still grown as a cash crop in parts of Kenya and East Africa today, a genuinely important agricultural chemistry quite separate from the ornamental chrysanthemum's ceremonial and artistic reputation. The chemical relationship also explains why chrysanthemums and their relatives are mildly toxic to cats and dogs if chewed, a real veterinary caution worth noting alongside the flower's more famous symbolic meanings.