Mum’s the word

The new sky smells like trout; the parking lot floods like a beach pond at low tide. As I stand outside of the supermarket entrance and suited up for my three-day-a-week pandemic assignment, a customer approaches. She tells me with a voice submerged beneath a floral face covering that it seemed just like yesterday—back in April—when she bought early dahlias from here to add colour to her world. It was then the time of dandelions she noted; she nodded in the direction of two wooden upright racks standing at the store’s front landing, racks chock-a-bloc with ready-to-bloom chrysanthemums; the delivery had arrived late the previous day and were yet to be unwrapped. Were they in seven-inch pots, the fall mums that is, she wanted to know? She mentioned how her regular habit is to support local nurseries, but they were regretfully closed during the pandemic lockdown of earlier. She would return to the now open facilities with the news that fall mums were on hand. As it turns out, dandelions, dahlias and chrysanthemums are all in the same Composite family: a dense mound flower with a bud count of as many as 600—try and count them one day if you are bored—that have different blooming periods from early year to fall. The conversation I had with the customer got me thinking.

I recall having two 50-yen pieces from Japan in my right hand collector-of-allthings desk drawer. The fact that the coins have a hole in the centre has always intrigued me. I have no memory of how the Expo 67 unused bumper sticker got in the drawer, but none- the-less on the face of the yen coins is the emblem of the chrysanthemum in relief. The Kiku, as the mum is called in Japan, arrived in that country in the eighth century and became the crest of the Emperor, from which has descended to the present the coin commemoration and the Festival of Happiness, a National mum day. The flower is popular over there, is what I am trying to say, and that my two coins which equal approximately a buck twenty five Canadian will buy me a small rice bowl in what is the equivalent of our dollar store phenomena, which in Japan is replicated as a 100 yen country-wide retail chain.

Within the branches of the mum family tree, the blossom was described as a flowering herb in 15th century Chinese writing; the emblem is also found on ancient pottery shards. The flower came to be regarded as the power of life: boiled roots a headache remedy; young sprouts in salads and the leaves enjoyed as a festive drink. All of it remains integrated in the culture of places today like Chu-Hsien in northern Taiwan, a place known as the Chrysanthemum City.

Another call to mind is being in the Don River Valley in Toronto years ago with a naturalist who was responsible for the preservation of over 500 parcels of natural lands in Ontario and across Canada. Before any highway development in the Don Valley, Charles Sauriol, among others, owned property at the forks of the Don, where he had a cottage. The lands were eventually expropriated for a highway under huge public outcry. Sauriol successfully advocated to have sections of the valley turned into parkland and not to be developed. His profound and ongoing connection to that terrain was something Sauriol wanted me to experience. A fit 90-year-old at the time, Sauriol and I descended a tart and slender trail through overgrown grasses to come upon a spot hidden behind a former brickworks plant—now a popular preserved site. Sauriol introduced me to a group of beehives— his beehives which had lasted over years. An ultimate take-away I have of that day is hearing a compressed density of bee sounds as we approached the place. The time was long after first frost of late November and the orchestra of the bees out-sounded the traffic hum of the demanding nearby Don Valley Parkway. The bees were festive in the quick light of autumn. Already the cusp of winter and the spectacle was in reward for Sauriol’s then ongoing tradition of collecting spent chrysanthemum plants that were set out at street curbs for discard. Contrary to the popular belief that the flowers were mostly fall decorative annuals only, Sauriol would amass them on his evening walks and no matter their apparent condition would stick them in the earth on the tract of ground that surrounded his beloved apiary. The place was south facing, and the multicoloured blooms that ruled the section of property that day were an all-you-can-eat buffet for the bees as they stockpiled the hives to over-winter the colony. Since that time I have remained loyal to Sauriol’s model and have had success planting discarded mum plants that have happened my way. Some continue to bloom until snow, especially with the help of an old cotton sheet thrown over them. While not every plant makes it until spring, the thought of botanical recycling and the bees are what I still call the Sauriol plan.

From the Asian countries the mum eventually found its way to North America. Being a novice at anything botanical, I was inspired to learn that it is in southern Ontario in recent years where the mum rose to global fame. In the most southern tip of Canada, at the same latitude of Rome in Italy is Point Pelee. The locale is well known to birders, but lesser known is that the name was given to Chrysanthemum x grandiflori, a mum with many years of botanical development. In its debut in 2006, more pots of the multi-coloured variety sold in the first year of introduction than any other floral mum in history. Known for its hardiness, it seems that the Point Pelee mum rules the verandas and gardens of today, adding blush to the upcoming season while living up to name of chrysanthemum; it was in 1753 that the Swedish botanist Karl Linnanes merged the Greek words chrysos meaning gold with antheum meaning flower. For commercial growers of now, grandiflori indeed and in response to the kind and inquiring customer, yes the mums come in seven-inch pots and thank you for the prompting.