Horticulture Study On The Ancient Chrysanthemum Treatises Of China

In China, there are a large number of chrysanthemum treatises which cover the most abundant contents among all the ancient treatises on ornamental plants. However, the research on it is scanty. By statistical analysis of chrysanthemum treatises in which different chrysanthemum cultivars of the past dynasties are recorded, clues for the evolution of the chrysanthemum cultivars in ancient China can be found. The ways of recording, the naming and classification of the cultivars and the appreciation theory in these chrysanthemum treatises have their merits that people can learn from now. They can provide reference for the composing of modern chrysanthemum treatises. As an important resource database of the profound chrysanthemum culture in China, it gives an detailed and effective account of culture and breeding technique, which is still of certain reference value to the culture and breeding of chrysanthemum nowadays.On the basis of the existence of ancient Chinese chrysanthemum treatises and the study on their contents, and by consulting documents of ancient books, this paper further looks into the existence and the development history of ancient Chinese chrysanthemum treatises, divides them into cultivars treatises, culture technique treatises, painting treatises, poem treatises and comprehensive treatises five categories according to their contents, and finds that the chrysanthemum in different dynasties have the characteristics of a certain historical period, which reflects the culture technique and aesthetic criteria of the period. According to the author, there are 46existing of the 68 chrysanthemums treatises in history. It is the best preserved among all the treatises and books for flowers and the condition of existence is good.Statistical analysis was carried out on the number of total cultivars, the inherited cultivars and the new cultivars in the treatises of Song, Ming and Qing dynasty respectively, and cultivar duplicate checking was done according to the order of their appearance. The result showed that there are 2886 chrysanthemum cultivarsin the ancient Chinese chrysanthemum treatises,and there are 1776 after duplicate checking.The study of ancient documents showed that the chrysanthemum in Song dynasty was mainly the type with the flower diameter from 2.3cm to 3.5cm. The colors were mainly yellow and white, and the morphological characters are quite original which were mostly dish flowers while a few of them have ray flower rings. It is the transitional type from the wild chrysanthemums to the cultured ones. The flower diameter in the Mid-Ming dynasty became between 6.5cm to 10cm, and in the late Ming dynasty there were cultivars whose flower diameters could be more than 15cm. Compare to Song dynasty, the number of red, purple, pink and bicolor flowers increased rapidly and there were also black ones. In the Mid-Ming dynasty there were all the floral types we have nowadays, and the embryonic form of the cultivar groups now we have was already formed in the late Ming dynasty. The flower diameter in Qing dynasty increased phenomenally.The number of cultivars whose flower diameter surpasses 15cm apparently, and some of them even surpassed 30cm. There were various kinds of colors and the floral types were mainly the Flat-petal group and the Quilled-petal group, the proportion is almost the same to that of the modern times. With the enrichment of the morphological characters, the characteristics of the ornamental chrysanthemums have already developed.The evolution rules of the floral types of chrysanthemum is that the proportion of the Flat-petal group decreased as time went on while that of the Quilled-petal group gradually increased, especially in Ming dynasty during which the differentiation of floral types was the fast. As for Spoon-petal group and Anemone-petal group, they appeared in Ming dynasty, and their proportion developed as stable as the Filiform-petal group.Before Song dynasty, chrysanthemums were classified according to their practical value. Song dynasty initiated the tradition of classifying chrysanthemums according to the color. In the late Ming dynasty, the comparatively mature classification system in ancient China was formed, that is to classify them into "early stem", "middle stem" and "late stem" by their blooming time firstly, and then classify them according to their "grade":the elite cultivars among the "lateflower diameter" are "fine breeds" while the rest are "crude breeds". The third classification unit is floral type, and then the flower color. In Qing dynasty, the criteria for the classification went back to the flower color and the "grade" again.In Song dynasty, the naming for chrysanthemums cultivars usually used two characters, it was comparatively simple. Most of the names only provided one characteristic of the cultivar among flower color, blooming time, producing area, floral type etc. In Ming dynasty, most of the names of chrysanthemums consisted of 3 characters, and the typical naming of a cultivar was to use one character to describe its color and a two character word to express its floral type. In Qing dynasty, most of the cultivars were named by three or four characters. Besides the color plus floral type mode began in Ming dynasty, people in Qing dynasty also liked to use four character words which was not only a reflection of the characteristic of the cultivar but also very poetic. It promoted the naming of chrysanthemums in China into a new level.However, the phenomenon that different cultivars shares one name and different names are used for one cultivar exited since ancient times and it was very serious, which resulted in the confusion in its naming at present.Beginning in Song dynasty, the record of culture technique developed in an all-round way in Ming and Qing dynasties. China has made great achievement in the culture technique of different cultivars and the breeding theories since ancient times, especially for chrysanthemums, an effective culture technique system was summed up by ancient people through careful observation of its habits and constant development of its culture method. Even though some of the traditional culture technique can hardly meet the needs of modernized production, they still deserve our study and discussion.There were various ways of chrysanthemum breeding, among them introduction, grafting, sport selection and seedling selection were the most commonly used. The sport selection breeding was mainly used before Qing dynasty while the method of seedling selection which combines natural hybridization with artificial selection was used in Qing dynasty. The ancient people in China paid special attention to the effects of the environment and used many effective measures to protect the seed in their comparatively perfect breeding system. These data can help us achieve better understanding on why there are all kinds of cultivars and variations in China and their evolution process.In ancient China, people always adopted the selective breeding method, and the aesthetic tendency of people decided the choice in breeding. However, the aesthetic criteria varied with time.People in Song dynasty related the aesthetic of chrysanthemums to the moral and ethical standards in the society, so they believe the best chrysanthemums are yellow which is the orthodox color. In Ming dynasty people broke out this frame and became to appreciate various kinds of colors and morphological characteristics of chrysanthemums in a more open way. This promoted the enrichment of chrysanthemum cultivars. People began to lay emphasis on its "Grade" in Qing dynasty, so they usually chose those ones with special and beautiful colors and floral types in breeding. This laid the foundation for the formation of the cultivars of Chinese characteristics.Chrysanthemums also had many practical values in ancient people's lives, like treating disease, brewing wines, drinking, eating etc. Ornamental chrysanthemums were used as hedge, screen, and vase planting indoors and as chrysanthemums slope, river by combining with water outdoors. Men of letters in ancient times shown so great love on chrysanthemums that they concluded a train of "suitable" and "unsuitable", from which we can know that the aesthetics of ancient people on chrysanthemums have already fallen into a certain "formula".