 Mums,
or Chrysanthemums, are classic composites -- they are "composite flowers". In
other words, the mum blossom at the right is actually a collection of hundreds of
flowers. Each tiny, orange bump in the flower's center is the top of a disk flower.
Each white "petal" is a ray flower. Each of the many disk and
ray flowers at the right bears a regular blossom's male and female parts. All this is
explained on our Composite Flower Page.When we speak of mums, we're referring to any of many species belonging to the genus Chrysanthemum, of which there are well over a hundred. The word "Chrysanthemum" is both the Latin name and the English name, which often is not the case. If you make a cross-section of the above flower, here is what you see:
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That
picture shows how the disk flowers are stacked on their bottoms atop the platform-like receptacle.
At the right you can see that better. Also, at the base of each disk flower you can see
the future "seeds," which are actually special composite-flower fruits
known as achenes. Once the flowers are pollinated, the achenes will
enlarge and harden. When you buy "mum seeds" for sowing in your garden, you buy
those achenes.
As is typical of composite flowers, the Chrysanthemum's flower heads arise
from a cuplike collection of scale-like bracts, like the ones at the
right. In some composite species the bracts are very slender and in others very wide,
sometimes they are other than green, and sometimes they are arranged in just one series so
that they stand side-to-side instead of overlapping like those above. You can see that the
Chrysanthemum's bracts are in three or more series and overlap.
On
our 