Chrysanthemum 'Blizzard'

Chrysanthemum x morifolium 'Blizzard'
(kris-AN-the-mum) (mor-ee-FOH-lee-um)

It was refreshing to see at least one non-cushion Chrysanthemum at the nursery. It wasn’t quite that bad but there seemed to be a real lack of anything different this year. This was a beautiful mum that the sun was shining on. They were a little too ‘out’ for me to buy. I have been shooting a lot of mum pictures and it seems to be an easy flower to get a good picture of. Not only the abundance of flowers per plant but the colors and shapes of them make it easy.


‘Blizzard’ is an extra late blooming mum with large flowers. The ones I saw were in 12-inch pots and were literally a big ball of flowers. There had to be hundreds on each plant. These were tagged ‘Marilyn’ and when I looked that up I landed on The Missouri Botanical Garden website. It is one of my favorite plant sites. Any way in the desription of ‘Marilyn’ it said:
“a clump-forming, fall-blooming garden mum with flat decorative capitulum form”.

Not knowing what a capitulum form was I had to look that up and found this definition:

2. An inflorescence consisting of a compact mass of small stalkless flowers, as in the English daisy. The yellow central portion of the capitulum of a daisy consists of disk flowers, while the outer white, petallike structures are actually ray flowers. The capitulum is the characteristic inflorescence of the composite family (Asteraceae) of flowering plants.

However, none of the pictures of ‘Marilyn’ matched my photos and after some more investigation I have come to the conclusion that this mum is ‘Blizzard’. That could be wrong, though.

I didn’t get the name of this Mum. It sure was cheery and bright yellow. This year I used mostly all bright yellow mums with some burgundy and was quite pleased with the color combination.