Chrysanthemum
The English flower lists gave the chrysanthemum meanings by colour: Kate Greenaway made the red "I love", the white "truth" and the yellow "slighted love". In Japan the chrysanthemum is the emblem of the imperial family.
Meaning
The chrysanthemum came into English gardens late. Richard Folkard's Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (1884) dates the first plant in England to 1764, and the pompon varieties to Fortune's introduction of the Chusan daisy from China in 1846. Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers (1884) gives it three colours and three meanings: red "I love", white "truth", yellow "slighted love". An earlier American book gave it something else. Brent Elliott, of the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library, records that H. Bourne's Flores Poetici (Boston, 1833) made the chrysanthemum "flattery", a meaning he found in no other book. In Japan the flower's meaning is living: Nippon.com describes the chrysanthemum as the flower of autumn, often used as an offering and as a Buddhist flower, and white chrysanthemums as a standard floral offering. The chrysanthemum is the Old Farmer's Almanac's flower for November.
Origin and history
Folkard wrote in 1884 that the chrysanthemum's leaf and flower had long been the emblem and blazon of the emperors of Japan. Nippon.com gives the history: chrysanthemums were grown in China first and reached Japan around the Heian period (794–1185). The flower is thought to have become the imperial crest in the early Kamakura period, through Emperor Go-Toba (reigned 1183–98), who liked the design. In the Meiji period a crest of sixteen double petals became the official imperial crest, drawn in detail in the Imperial Household Ceremony Regulations of 1926. The chrysanthemum on Japanese passports also has sixteen petals.
Colour in the English lists
Greenaway's colours follow the pattern of her other yellow flowers, which almost all carry bad news: the yellow rose "decrease of love; jealousy", the yellow Carnation "disdain", the yellow Tulip "hopeless love".
See also
November birth flower: chrysanthemum, Yellow rose, Red rose, White rose, Yellow rose, Pink rose.
Sources
- Language of Flowers, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, 1884, George Routledge and Sons (Project Gutenberg edition), Chrysanthemum; yellow flowers
- The Victorian Language of Flowers (Brent Elliott, 2013), Brent Elliott, "The Victorian language of flowers", Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library 10: 3–94 (2013), Royal Horticultural Society, via the Internet Archive, p. 33
- Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (Richard Folkard, 1884), Richard Folkard, Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (London: Sampson Low, 1884), Project Gutenberg, Chrysanthemum
- The Chrysanthemum: Japan’s Fall Flower and Imperial Symbol (Nippon.com), Nippon.com (Nippon Communications Foundation)
- Birth Flowers by Month: Discover Your Monthly Flower & Meaning, Catherine Boeckmann, updated 17 September 2026, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, November
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Last reviewed September 29, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research