THE CHRYSANTHEMUM 



THAT mightiest of all the epoch-making movements of the twen- 

 tieth century, the awakening of Asia, in particular the rise of 

 Japan and her alliance with Great Britain, has given new in- 

 terest to those plants which originally came to us from the Far 

 East. It is true that the rise and fall of dynasties, the aggran- 

 disement of some states and the decline of others, the ebb and 

 flow of the turbulent stream of world politics, leave the professed 

 devotee of flowers unmoved. He lives, serene and contented, in a 

 little world of his own. He is obsessed by the future development 

 of the flower which he specialises ; he has no thought for its past. 

 But others love to learn all about the flowers which they grow 

 whence they came, what they were like when history first took 

 them into account, and the part they played in the life of the 

 nation which gave them birth. Imagination seeks play. It con- 

 jures up pictures of the contemporary life of the early stages of 

 popular plants. It sees through the murk of drear Western 

 November days the warmth and colour of the lands of the East. 



The Chrysanthemum is the Golden Flower, the national floral 

 emblem, of Japan. With the island warriors whose martial 

 prowess has been proved within recent years on the bloodstained 

 fields of Manchuria it holds the place that the Rose does with the 

 allied island race of the West. This fact must have its interest 

 for us. Second only to the Rose as a popular flower in Great 

 Britain, the Chrysanthemum stands first with the highly trained, 

 progressive, ambitious Pacific nation whose future is bound up so 

 closely with our own. 



As we see the flower in its most impressive form at our 



293 



