"The 'mums are taking over the garden"

It's a marketer's dream: chrysanthemums is a mouthful usually shortened to 'mums, and they bloom around Mother's Day! And so florists are full of bunches of 'mums and garden centres feature displays of them as potted colour. New to the potted colour front is a range of 'mums called Jacqueline, developed by North American plant breeder, Syngenta.

Jacqueline 'mums come in both two-toned and solid colours, in orange, yellow, pink and white shades. What makes them spectacular is that they naturally grow into a dome about 50cm across that is completely covered in flowers, like a floral disco ball in a pot. They can be marvelled at indoors while in flower, then parked in a sunny spot outdoors, flower heads trimmed off, to bloom again next year.

Jacqueline is a bit of a prosaic name when you consider that chrysanthemums were the catalyst for a whole new way of naming cultivars in Europe. Until the early 19th century varieties of plants were known by simple descriptors – single white, double buff, late purple. Then the Royal Horticultural Society secretary Joseph Sabine received a packet of illustrations of peonies, camellias and chrysanthemums from a tea plantation manager in China. The illustrations were titled with translations of the local names of the flowers. Sabine loved the lyricism of a chrysanthemum called White Waves of Autumn, wrote a paper about it and lyricism in naming cultivars caught on.

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