Important Groups and Varieties of Chrysanthemum
The chrysanthemums are classified into two main categories according to size i.e.: i) Large flowered and (ii) Small flowered.
These two are further divided into groups. Some of the important ones being
i) Large Flowered:
1. Incurved: The ray florets are incurved and overlapping. Florets are not twisted and blooms are compact and globular when fully developed e.g. Snow ball (White flowers), Sonar bangla (yellow), Chandrama (Yellow), Ghenghis Khan (Copper, Bronze and Orange), Graoe bowl (Rosy purple).
a) Re Flexed: This is just opposite to incurved. Ray florets reflex outside and overlap one other e.g. Creota (White), Dorothan (White), City beauty (Yellow),
Sweet heart (Pink).
b) Spider: Ray florets are large and tubular and usually curved, e.g. Rirpasi Bangla (white), Bidhan’s best (Mauve), Mahatma Gandhi (Cream).
ii) Small Flowered:
1) Korean (Single) : The ray florets are flat, strap like and blooms are flat Numbers of whorls of ray florets are five or less than five and disc is open e.g. Cardinal (red), Chairman (Bright yellow).
2) Korean (double) : Similar to Korean single but whorls of ray florets are more than five and disc is open e.g. Junta Wells (Yellow), Flirt (maroon), Manbhawan (Yellow).
3) Decorative: Similar to Koreoan double except that flower is completely double and center of bloom is not visible e.g. Aretic (White), Blue chip (Purple), Jubilee (Yellow), Alankar (Orange).
4) Anemone: Ray florets are small or may be twisted or quilled but disc florets are well developed and prominent e.g. Caleb cox (light brown).
5) Pompon: These are now getting popular and produce large crop of-small bloom. Pinching once or twice is very helpful. Ray florets are short, broad, regularly arranged to give bloom a compact hemispherical shape and florets are incurved or reflexed e.g. Camoo (White), Dandy (Bronze), Eve (Purpoe), Nanako (Yellow).
New Chrysanthemum Cultivars:
Chrysanthemum Shanti, Sadbhavana, Y2K, and ‘Kargil 99’ have been developed through open pollinated seedling selections and released for commercialization.
‘Shanti’ is a very good cut flower variety. "Whereas ‘Sadhbhavana*, ‘YzK’ and ‘Kargil 99* are suitable for mini culture. These four varieties have been released in January 2000.
PKV Shubhrn: It is high flower yielding variety of chrysanthemum released by PDKV, Akola for Vidarbha region.