THE Chinese developed more than 100 varieties of chrysanthemums by the early Middle Ages. A recent festival in Iran, celebrating that country's emerging cut-flower industry, boasted 700 types of the flower. The mum's combination of substance and grace has inspired ancient poetry, traditional kimono patterns and contemporary tattoos.
Still, not everyone loves a mum. A French etiquette book warns that it is irretrievably gauche to bring chrysanthemums to your dinner hostess. Anyone who has ever despaired of making a graceful arrangement from three stiff stems of pincushions or daisies-on-a-stick will be tempted to agree.
In much of Western Europe, chrysanthemums are primarily funeral flowers, but a bigger strike against them may be their unchic, mass-market availability. A Westwood florist says her customers spurn mums as grocery store blooms.
The same characteristics that put off detractors inspire admirers. Adaptable in growth, indefatigable in the vase, chrysanthemums are the good soldiers of the flower world. They flourish -- deep green and tight-budded -- during the hottest summers yet can flower in the midst of snowdrifts that would turn less intrepid blooms to mush.
In China, where the plant is called ju, it's considered a symbol of nobility; in Japan, as kiku, it's the emblem of the emperor. Both attributions reflect the plant's iron constitution.
Our name, chrysanthemum -- bestowed by Carl Linnaeus when the plant was brought to Europe in the 18th century -- comes from the Greek word for gold. It's an accurate reflection of the flower's original color, but a better name might be "here comes the night." Chrysanthemums' bud-setting phase is said to be light-sensitive, but the plant's hormones are actually responding to the hours of darkness. Humans may find autumn's cool and lengthening nights depressing, but to a chrysanthemum, they're a signal to bloom like crazy.
This propensity for bursting into one, big bush full of color has inspired growers with an artistic bent on both sides of the Pacific. In Japan, fall festivals have long been enlivened by life-size chrysanthemum dolls.
Using techniques developed in the 19th century, master craftsmen twist living plants through a bamboo framework, arranging blooms and leaves in the intricate patterns of formal kimonos. The dolls are displayed in tableaux re-creating scenes from classical Japanese drama.
