When you think of chrysanthemums, mums for short, it’s hard not to think of a front porch in the fall beautifully decorated with pumpkins and mums of a variety of autumn colors.
In researching mums, I discovered that there is so much more to the mum than just being a fall decoration.
Tidbits about mums
Most mums are flowering herbaceous, perennial herbs and are related to several other flowers: dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos and marigolds.
What we consider the flower is rather a collection of hundreds of florets containing both sexual parts. There are both disc and ray florets. Disc florets are the flat, disc-like center of the daisy-type mum. The ray florets are the petals that shoot like rays from the center.
Mums are sun lovers and need at least six hours of sunshine a day. They need lots of water — keep moist but not wet. They grow in almost any type of soil, but enjoy a bit of compost material, and can be grown in pots or the ground with good drainage.
Garden mums have hardy stolons (underground runners) from which new stems form the following season. Cultivated and hybrid mums have limited stolons; they need extra protection in the winter.
Mum flowers last longer than most other flowers. A cut mum flower lasts weeks rather than days.
You can grow the fancy florist varieties
There are more than 100 different cultivars of the chrysanthemum in the United States, which come in a wide array of colors in multiple shades of white, yellow, red, purple and green.
Just as mums come in a variety of colors, they also come in various shapes and sizes. The U.S. National Chrysanthemum Society categorizes mum bloom forms into 13 categories or classes. Another three are listed as special use: bonsai (gnomes), cascades and garden variety. This system assists growers to identify cultivars for purchase, exhibition and use.
Florist-type mums are grown as sprays or disbuds. Sprays include multiple flowers; whereas, disbudded stems have had all but one bud removed to create one focal flower ranging in size from 4 to 8 inches in width.
Due to space, I’ll name each class but will describe just a few of my favorites. Please visit the chrysanthemum websites to view all of them.
The classifications grown as disbuds are:
- 13. Unclassified (exotics)
- Classification 12. brush or thistle is grown only as a spray.
The following classifications are grown as both sprays and disbuds:
- 6. Pompon (not pompom) — a small globular bloom
- 7. Single and semi-double, “daisy-like” mum
- Class 4. decorative — the most common mum — is grown as a potted plant or a disbud.
My favorites are the 3. incurve — petals curve up forming a complete globe; 8. anemone — similar to semi-double, but with a raised, cushion-like center making it look like a fancy British lady’s hat; and 11. spider — long tubular ray florets that coil or hook at ends, thus resembling a mass of spider legs.
How can I grow these big, homecoming game mums?
To grow the fancy varieties, they will need to be ordered online between January and March or purchased from a local chrysanthemum chapter plant sale in Houston or Dallas.
Still, it takes a long, cool growing season to obtain the AA-sized blooms of class 1 or 2 mums. In long, warm growing regions, such as south Texas, the blooms seldom reach their maximum size and they may develop open centers, but they’re still beautiful.
To learn all about chrysanthemums, read more at mums.org/chrysanthemum-classes/, kingsmums.com, and gilmour.com/growing-chrysanthemum.
The Gardeners’ Dirt is written by members of the Victoria County Master Gardener Association, an educational outreach of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension – Victoria County. Mail your questions in care of the Advocate, P.O. Box 1518, Victoria, TX 77901; or vcmga@vicad.com, or comment on this column at VictoriaAdvocate.com.
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Victoria County Master Gardener Association
