According to classic records, China has cultivated chrysanthemums for more than 3,000 years. The earliest records can be found in Zhou Guan and Ya Bu. "Book of Rites and Moon Order": "There are yellow flowers in autumn", indicating that chrysanthemums bloom in autumn, when they were all wild species and the flowers were yellow. Chrysanthemums are recorded in The Book of Songs from the Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period and Qu Yuan's Lisao. There is a saying in Lisao, "Drink Mulan in the morning and Qiuju in the evening". It shows that chrysanthemum has long been inextricably linked with the culture of the Chinese nation. In Xianyang, the capital of the Qin Dynasty, there was a grand chrysanthemum exhibition market, which showed that chrysanthemums were cultivated at that time.

"Shen Nong's Classic of Materia Medica" in Han Dynasty recorded that "Chrysanthemum can strengthen the body and prolong life if taken for a long time". Miscellanies of Xijing: "Chrysanthemum is suitable, and stems and leaves are picked and mixed with millet. Drink it when it is ripe on September 9 next year, so it is called chrysanthemum wine. " At that time, the queen and concubines in the palace called it "longevity wine" and gave it to each other as a nourishing medicine. This custom has been popular until the Three Kingdoms period. "Shu people have a variety of chrysanthemums, seedlings can be used as medicine, flowers can be planted in the garden, and wild chrysanthemums can be collected as medicine in the countryside. "As can be seen from these records, chrysanthemum was originally cultivated in China for food and medicine.

Tao Yuanming (355-4 17) in Jin Dynasty was obsessed with chrysanthemums, which was once widely circulated. He has written many poems about chrysanthemums, such as "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely"; Famous sentences such as "Autumn chrysanthemums are more beautiful with bright colors" are still widely circulated today. At that time, doctors all over the world admired its integrity and variety of chrysanthemums, praising chrysanthemums as "fragrant, colorful and brilliant."

Tao Hongjing (452-536) in the Southern and Northern Dynasties divided chrysanthemums into "true chrysanthemums" and "bitter barley". The stems are purple, fragrant and sweet, and the leaves can be used as soup for real chrysanthemums; It's purple and big, it's absinthe, and it tastes bitter. People who eat are bitter, but they are not real chrysanthemums. This understanding of chrysanthemum has taken a step further.

By the Tang Dynasty (6 18-907), the cultivation of chrysanthemum was very common, and the cultivation techniques were further improved. Chrysanthemum is propagated by grafting. Purple and white varieties appeared. For example, Li Shangyin's poem: "Stealing the purple, melting to the yellow". Bai Juyi's poem: "There are chrysanthemums in the garden, and there are solitary clumps in it like frost" is proof. At this time, chrysanthemums spread from China to Japan and were appreciated by the Japanese people. Later, they crossed chrysanthemums with several wild chrysanthemums in Japan, forming a Japanese chrysanthemum cultivation system.

In Song Dynasty, chrysanthemum was cultivated more vigorously. With the improvement of cultivation and selection techniques, the varieties of chrysanthemum have also increased greatly, which is an important period from medicinal use to garden appreciation. Chrysanthemum Spectrum in this period classified the varieties planted by color and recorded the flower shapes in detail. Liu Meng's Chrysanthemum Catalogue (1 104) is the earliest monograph on ornamental chrysanthemums, which records 26 chrysanthemum varieties. There are 35 species recorded in Fan Chengda Chrysanthemum Tree (10 18), among which "Hechan" and "Hongchangshan" are the earliest recorded species with tube petals. Later, green "green hibiscus" and black "ink chrysanthemum" appeared in the design and color. In terms of cultivation, we have further experience in shaping, coring, maintenance and management of chrysanthemum and obtaining new varieties through seed propagation. "Five Stories of Getting Rich" records: "Lin 'an Garden, every time in the ninth grade, every flower is surprisingly good, called Chrysanthemum Club. According to Hangzhou records, there is a flower market in Lin 'an, and chrysanthemums are flower pagodas. It can be seen that there are flower markets and flower exhibitions in Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. The Chrysanthemum Festival, which has been handed down to this day, began in Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty. There are 13 1 chrysanthemum varieties recorded in Hundred Chrysanthemums Collection, which was recorded in the history of Song Dynasty.

In the Ming Dynasty, the technology of planting chrysanthemums was further improved, the varieties of chrysanthemums increased, and the chrysanthemum spectrum also increased. For example, Huang Shengzeng, Ma Bozhou, Zhou, Yue and others all wrote chrysanthemums. There are 220 species of chrysanthemums recorded in the chrysanthemum spectrum written by Huang Shengzeng. There are many records about chrysanthemums in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica (1580) and Wang's Qunfangpu (1630). Qunfangpu conducted a comprehensive study on chrysanthemum varieties, including 92 yellow varieties, 73 white varieties, 32 purple varieties, 35 red varieties, 22 pink varieties, different varieties 17 varieties, ***6 categories and 27 1 variety. At least 16 patterns.

There are many monographs on chrysanthemums in Qing Dynasty, such as Chen Haozi's Flower Mirror, Generous Prose, Xu's Dongli Zhongzheng, Lu Yancan's Chrysanthemum Record, Min's Chrysanthemum Cultivation Method, Su Pu Chrysanthemum, Yan Lu's Chrysanthemum Notes, Ji Nan's Chrysanthemum Theory and Chen Moushan's Chrysanthemum Theory. According to the book Flower Mirror, there were 54 species of chrysanthemums, 32 species of white chrysanthemums, 465,438+0 species of red chrysanthemums and 27 species of purple chrysanthemums, accounting for 65,438+054 species. Ji Nan's "Ju Shuo" included 233 varieties of chrysanthemum, including more than 100 newly cultivated varieties, and put forward the methods of chrysanthemum breeding. There are more and more varieties of chrysanthemums in Qing Dynasty. During the Qianlong period, some people presented chrysanthemums with various colors to the Qing emperor. Qianlong once asked Zou, the painter at that time, to paint in the palace and bind it into a book. Painting chrysanthemum poems among literati has also become a common practice. Chrysanthemum was introduced into Europe from China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. 1688, Dutch merchants introduced chrysanthemums from China to Europe for cultivation. 1689, Dutch writer Bei Lini wrote a book "Chrysanthemum, a Great Oriental Flower". /kloc-In the middle of the 8th century, the Frenchman Louis Berta brought China's chrysanthemum varieties to France. /kloc-In the 9th century, the British botanist Fortune introduced chrysanthemum varieties to Zhoushan Islands in China, Zhejiang Province and Japan, and conducted cross breeding to form various types of British chrysanthemums. Soon, it spread from England to America. Since then, this famous flower has been planted all over the world. Chrysanthemum cultivated in China has become an important parent of chrysanthemum in the west.

Since the Republic of China, a large number of chrysanthemum varieties have been separated, and there is no official literature to check. After liberation, with the development of horticulture, chrysanthemum has experienced a tortuous course and is growing stronger day by day. The cultivation history of chrysanthemum is a part of the development of flower gardening in China. In recent years, on the basis of inheriting predecessors' experience, improving cultivation techniques and adopting new technologies such as cross breeding, radiation mutation and tissue culture have not only improved the quality of chrysanthemum production, but also increased the number of varieties, which has reached more than 7,000 according to incomplete statistics. A Chrysanthemum morifolium can bloom more than 5000 flowers, which is the development of table chrysanthemum and bonsai chrysanthemum.