Please pinch and zoom this photo or you’ll miss the astonishing details that make Longwood Gardens’ Chrysanthemum display so spectacular…
Center stage is the Longwood gardenders’ pièce de résistance—a thousand-blossom Chrysanthemum that actually incorporates some 1400 blossoms, all grafted onto a single, sense-arousing super-plant. But this is just the icing.
Don’t miss the rest of this floral paradise, including the beds of gold, white and deep lavender Chrysanthemums, the waterfall, the forest of golden blossoms, and the grand glass structure of the East Conservatory itself, seemingly inspired by the vanished Crystal Palace of the first world’s fair in Victorian London.
Then tap the image below to see a brief video of the spectacle, with twin 140-blossom Chrysanthemums in the foreground:
And here’s the centerpiece of this display…
The mind-blowing 1400 blossom Chrysanthemum—plus a detail shot that reveals the painstaking trellising needed to support each blossom. And a cross-sectioned view of a smaller, 140-blossom Chrysanthemum, revealing how the grafting and trellising is done. I still can’t imagine, even after examining these plants for hours, how they get every single bud to explode in perfect bloom in unison with all the others. I suppose it’s a proprietary secret, because this is the only plant of its kind outside of Japan. Double-tap any photo below to see it full-size:
