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Episode 06

Chrysanthemum Meaning: Graves in France, Emperor in Japan

In Japan the chrysanthemum is the emperor's crest; in France it's the flower of the dead. One emperor's choice and the length of the night explain the split.

31 October 20267 min readVideo 8:35

The chrysanthemum means the emperor in Japan because Emperor Go-Toba took it as his personal mark more than 800 years ago, and it became the imperial emblem. In France it began replacing the candles on graves in the mid-19th century, as one of the few flowers still blooming when families visit their dead in November, and after 1919 it was on every grave. It blooms then because it flowers only once the nights grow long.

Watch the episode: Never Bring This Flower to a French Dinner 8:35

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Every year France sells more than 25 million pots of chrysanthemums. In 2023, nearly 4 million French households bought plants for All Saints (la Toussaint), and 60% of them were chrysanthemums. In the same days, Tokyo's Shinjuku Gyoen holds its chrysanthemum exhibition, which began in 1878 for the imperial family and now runs from 1 to 15 November.

In France, you don't bring chrysanthemums to someone's home. In Japan, the flower is on the passport. Even the name sounds cheerful: it comes from two Greek words meaning gold and flower. I wanted to know how one flower ended up meaning such different things.

How did the chrysanthemum become Japan's imperial flower?

It isn't really from either place. People in China were already growing it 2,000 years ago. There it was a poet's flower: the custom of viewing chrysanthemums and drinking chrysanthemum wine is often linked to Tao Yuanming, who loved both. The wine is older than he is, though. The oldest known story of the Double Ninth festival, from the Eastern Han dynasty, already has it.

The flower reached Japan as medicine, brought from China in the Nara period (710 to 794). How does a medicine end up on the throne? Through an emperor who never got the sword. Go-Toba, emperor from 1183, was the first to take the throne without the three imperial regalia, and in 1185 the imperial sword was lost at sea in the battle of Dannoura. Later he took part in hardening sword blades with the imperial smiths and marked them with a chrysanthemum crest. That crest is now the imperial emblem.

Today the chrysanthemum is the symbol of the Emperor and the imperial family, and the imperial seal uses a 16-petal version. The Emperor's position is called the Chrysanthemum Throne. Few flowers get one of those.

A passport cover usually carries the country's national emblem. Japan has no emblem fixed in law, so its passport carries a stylized chrysanthemum in its place.

At the Tokyo show, one bed holds 311 plants of 39 cultivars in diagonal lines. In the ozukuri style, one root is grown for a year or more and trained into a dome of hundreds of flowers. Japan eats them too: in Yamagata, the petals are boiled briefly with vinegar and served with soy sauce, and Aichi grows most of the small edible ones used to decorate sashimi. A yellow chrysanthemum stands for long life and happiness.

How did chrysanthemums reach Europe?

Slowly. A Dutch merchant brought them to the Netherlands around 1688, and very little happened. In England, a small yellow one was growing at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1764. In 1789 Pierre Blancard, a sea captain from Marseille, brought the first chrysanthemum cuttings from China to France.

England is where it took off. In the 19th century, wealthy amateurs and nurserymen devoted their lives to breeding chrysanthemums, built a cut-flower trade, and formed societies; one founded in 1846 became the National Chrysanthemum Society. In 1862 the plant hunter Robert Fortune brought Japanese varieties to England, quite unlike the ones Europe had. For now, it was a flower for shows and gardens.

When did it become France's flower of the dead?

Later than you'd think. French graves used to get candles, which stood for life after death. Then, from the mid-19th century, chrysanthemums began to take their place.

On 1 November 1919, the magazine Le Monde illustré reported a white chrysanthemum on every grave. The first ones laid for the dead were white, the colour of sadness and mourning. Ten days later, on 11 November, at the first commemoration of the 1918 armistice, President Raymond Poincaré required every war memorial in France to be decorated with flowers.

In November, there wasn't much to choose from. Few flowers are still in bloom that late, and the chrysanthemum is one of them. The habit grew stronger after the war and spread to All Saints (1 November) and All Souls (2 November), when families visit their dead. So France's flower of the dead, which feels as old as the graves, took over only about a century ago.

France isn't alone. In Belgium, Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary and Croatia it is the flower for funerals and graves too. In Poland, All Saints is a public holiday: millions travel home, and the cemeteries glow with red and amber candles in decorative jars. In Italy it blooms from late summer into November, in time for the commemoration of the dead.

Koreans began using white chrysanthemums at funerals at the end of the Joseon Kingdom, in the late 19th century, a flower said to suit their white hemp mourning clothes. Even in Japan, white chrysanthemums are a standard funeral offering.

Why do chrysanthemums bloom in November?

Because the plant counts the dark. Chrysanthemums are short-day plants: they bloom when days are shorter than about 12 hours, and what matters most is a long stretch of uninterrupted darkness. Give them longer days and they won't set buds. Poinsettias and Christmas cactus run on the same clock.

Growers use this. Cover the plants for at least 12 hours a day for several weeks, and they bloom early.

Paris times its own crop to the day. The city grows about 75,000 chrysanthemum plants: cuttings go under glass from February to April, the plants go out in May and come up in October, and production is timed so they all peak on All Saints' Day. At least 60,000 go to its parks and its 20 cemeteries.

Why is it a Mother's Day and homecoming flower elsewhere?

Flip the calendar. In Australia, Mother's Day falls in May, which is autumn there and chrysanthemum time. Mother's Day gift-giving began in 1924, started by a Sydney woman, Janet Heyden, after the First World War; she collected gifts for older women in a hospital who had lost their sons.

In the United States the flower is a "mum", and about 45 million pots of hardy chrysanthemums sold there in 2009/2010. At the University of Missouri, which held its first homecoming in 1911, students wore chrysanthemums to the football game. The earliest known photo of a Texas homecoming mum was taken at Baylor University in 1936, and at some Texas high schools the mum is now a rite of passage.

Today it is usually an artificial flower almost buried in ribbons, charms, cowbells, jingle bells, stuffed animals and even LED lights, and the custom has spread to Oklahoma and Louisiana. They cost from hundreds of dollars to more than $1,000, and orders open as early as March. For one football game.

Watch the florist's door next November

An emperor chose the chrysanthemum as his mark more than 800 years ago. In France, it was one of the few flowers still blooming when families visited their graves in November, so in 1919, when the president had every war memorial flowered, it was right there.

Next November, look at what the florist puts by the door. In France it is probably going to a grave, and it opened on time because the nights got long.

What flower would be a terrible gift where you live?

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