Should There Be Blue Chrysanthemums?
According to a recent article in the New York Times, Japanese scientists have developed a blue Chrysanthemum through splicing in genes from two blue-flowering plants.
Research suggests that blue is the most popular color among people, but blue flowers are relatively rare. It turns out that a plant needs specific genetic machinery to have blue blooms. The pigments in blue flowers are actually orange, red, or purple. With certain plants the pigments undergo a chemical reaction that results in a blue flower.
The first question that comes to my mind is this: why would you want to have a blue Chrysanthemum? Yes, blue is a beautiful color (it’s one of my two favorites, along with orange). But to me, a blue Chrysanthemum is just a funny-looking Chrysanthemum, and God knows we have enough of those already.
I feel a reflexive resistance to messing with the basic forms or color range of garden plants, whether the changes result from genetic engineering or traditional breeding methods. There is a practical argument for this: evidence suggests that the more fundamentally you change a plant, the more you are likely to reduce its usefulness to pollinators.
There are also broader concerns about the impact of genetically engineered plants. I don’t know enough to have a strong opinion on that topic, though the prospect of Frankenplants makes me generally uneasy.
Which is not to say that I am a purist. My own garden has a mix of straight species and cultivars bred for a variety of attributes – disease resistance, habit, and yes, color. But these cultivars generally do not change the basic look of the species.
Admittedly, my own feelings are subjective. It boils down to a sense that radically changed plants just don’t look right. I mean, if we could have a 10′ tall climbing Daylily with double blue flowers, would that be a good thing?
And I suspect that if any flower could be blue, blue flowers would cease to seem so special or beautiful.
My argument may rest on thin topsoil, of course. So many domesticated plants, especially the ones we eat, have been radically changed over the centuries. No doubt my attitude is shaped by cultural conditioning of time and place.
So be it. Most people, myself included, react to gardens in an emotional way. What makes a garden satisfying is about feelings, not logic. And blue Chrysanthemums just don’t feel right.
gardeninacity 
There should always be as many blue blooms as possible. Great shots!
I agree, Chrysanthemums look fine the way they are…. There is a faded blue coloured rose ( don’t know the name) And it doesn’t look natural to me either..
Hard to beat nature really …
Blue roses and black roses … why do people bother?
I agree, Chrysanthemums should not be blue. Just like roses shouldn’t be (although I believe there is one), and would a blue Tithonia have the same effect on me as the orange ones? No, don’t think so! That photo with the golden rod and aster is lovely. 🙂
Blue Tithonia!? Perish the thought!
I agree and may I add my own particular hate “roses and other flowers that have been dyed before being sold as cut flowers” . The awful thing is the stems and leaves are blue too, to my eyes they look dreadful
I agree. Although I confess that before I knew better I brought Judy a bunch of daisies dyed blue for Valentine’s Day.
I’m with Christina on adding dye to flowers. One point I must raise is that when a plant is bred for larger/double etc flowers, that can impact pollinators, but what about the foliage? If that plant was originally the host to caterpillars, surely they will still feed on it? Since I garden with wildlife in mind, I don’t choose to grow double flowers, however if another gardener happens to prefer double flowers and the leaves of that plant provide sustenance to caterpillars or shelter to mini beasts, then I would rather that they grew that plant than nothing at all.
A fair point. Although I have read that cultivars with purple foliage may not be palatable to caterpillars because of the chemical composition of the added pigment
Great post. Have you watched the film, SEED, THE UNTOLD STORY? I highly recommend watching it, amazing film and very informative. You can stream it for a small fee ( $5.00, I think) and it will shed some light on hybridization and genetic engineering.
Sounds like it is worth seeing. I will watch for it.
The whole Franken-plant thing makes me uneasy, too, though many of the chrysanthemums sold in fall in their little tight (and I’m assuming pruned) meatball shape look kind of unnatural to me anyway. So many of the plants now sold in nurseries are foreign and don’t have much to offer the pollinators, since people don’t want a plant whose leaves are chewed up by caterpillars. It is just sad we are going further down that tunnel…
Well, at least we can offer an alternative example in our own gardens.
I’m not a fan of what I call fru-fru plants – ones that have been ‘designed’ to meet someone’s artistic vision, but I suspect there can’t be that great a demand for them, so hopefully they will fade out like other fads. I like how you tease us with blue flowers in lovely bloom, but make us think about the artificial construct of blue chrysanthemums. We’ve been messing with changing plants since Mendel went out to his pea patch, and even if we like to think we have control over our gardens, well, mother nature has a way of balancing things out. Thank goodness. Great post.
I used to belong to the Daylily Society (AHS), but after looking at pictures of daylilies that looked like they were designed by mad scientists, I dropped out. One person’s dream is my nightmare. Enough with messing with nature to extremes.
LOL! Being a gardener attracted to the form of species daylilies and old-fashioned hybrids does relegate a member to a small minority in the daylily world. The upside is that the connected world has allowed many of us to find each other.
I am not fond of the artificial changes. A blue mum. No, not in my garden.
Good points! And, yet, how I love blue.
I say no to blue chrysanthemums. There are plenty of pretty blue asters for that time year and enough with the monkey business.
Hear, hear!
Blue Mum? Isn’t that a Riesling? What you and I think doesn’t really matter, it’s what people buy that drives the machine. Dyed carnations, spray-painted succulents, and those God awful, weird-ass, alien-looking orchids in unnatural shades of blue wouldn’t continue to crowd the shelves of retailers if people didn’t drag them home. Who thought it would be a good idea to attach dyed straw flowers to cacti using a hot glue gun? On the other hand, if these abominations are an entry drug to a plant addiction that eventually matures out of such things, maybe they’re not entirely heinous. Bring on the Blue Mum, I need a drink.
I can’t figure out if your attitude is cynical or hopeful.
Too many artificial-looking flowers already! Reading this I was trying to imagine some other flowers if they were blue, and nasturtiums came to mind…now that just wouldn’t be right!
Agreed.
I totally agree with you, why fix something that isn’t broken? Love your natural blues, so very soothing.xxx
If we have to have them I’d rather have a blue mum developed the old way rather than genetically engineered.
I don’t think it would be possible without genetic engineering.
Our experience at the nursery is that overly hybridized plants are far less vigorous and/or hardy than the parent plants before someone started fiddling with them. Heucheras are a case in point.
Interesting. And I have to say I really don’t like the new Heuchera cultivars and their gaudy colors. They look artificial to me.
I’ll take a nice grove of Delphiniums any day to the faux blue that is usually purple or lavender in any case. I remember a mail order catalog from the 80’s (Wayside maybe) that always had this weirdly tinted photo of Aster frikartii, trying to sell it to unsuspecting gardeners as blue.
Yeah, I get the Wayside catalog and usually throw it away. Don’t know why they send it to me, I’ve never bought anything from them.
Frankenplants is a great word creation, I love it! But on the topic: I fear, most of what we consider our “original” garden and food plants, are creations or alterations of other plants, already.
Point taken. Not sure I can take credit for Frankenplants, I may have seen it somewhere.
I don’t support gene splicing so I’m not in favor of the blue mum. And even when we monkey with the breeding of certain plants and animals, the results are often just as bad as they are good. Here’s an example: My mom raised English bulldogs. English bulldogs are a mess because the show standard for an E. bulldog is a short nose and a big head with lots of wrinkles. –These are the traits English bulldog breeders breed for. The result? English bulldogs who can’t birth their babies naturally because the heads are too big to go through the pelvis. English bulldogs who overheat because their noses are short, and they can’t breathe well. English bulldogs with eye problems and infected wrinkles. Not good. (I’m getting off my soap box now.)
Oh, those poor bulldogs! I had no idea.
My opinion, too. There are enough wonderful blue blooming plants.
Took a little while but now I wrote an answer on your question concerning my pond. You can see it there.
Have a nice weekend
This post gives me the opportunity to use an expression I love but have never actually uttered. Heaven forfend!
People don’t say that enough. And these days you would think there are plenty of opportunities.
No, to blue chrysanthemums!