Why Spain buys chrysanthemums on 1 November, and how to keep one alive afterwards
Why Spain buys chrysanthemums for 1 November, why they flower right then, and how to keep a potted one alive through winter so it flowers again.
Spain buys chrysanthemums for All Saints' Day because the plant flowers by itself at the end of October, and growers can time it to the exact date. Families take them to the graves of their relatives on 1 November. A potted chrysanthemum does not have to be thrown away afterwards. Cut it back, keep it frost-free through winter, and it flowers again the next autumn.
Why Spain buys chrysanthemums for All Saints' Day
All Saints' Day, Todos los Santos in Spanish and Tots Sants in Catalan, is a national holiday on 1 November. It is the day many Spanish families visit the cemetery and leave flowers on the graves of their dead, from the Almudena in Madrid to Montjuïc in Barcelona. The Catholic calendar keeps 2 November for the dead, but in Spain the visit happens around the holiday.
The chrysanthemum became the flower of that visit for two practical reasons. A 1998 article in Horticultura, kept in the library of Spain's Ministry of Agriculture, calls it the queen flower of All Saints because it flowers naturally at this time of year and because growers can steer the crop to flower on the date. The same article says flower sales multiply at least tenfold in the weeks before.
The scale is still large today. According to FEPEX, the Spanish federation of fruit, vegetable, flower and plant growers and exporters, the All Saints week accounts for 15 to 20% of the cut flowers Spain sells in a year. In 2022 it named the chrysanthemum the best-selling cut flower of the day, and most of it is grown in Spanish nurseries.
All Saints in Catalonia, from the cemetery to the Castanyada
In Catalonia the day has a second half. The Castanyada is a meal of roasted chestnuts, panellets (small almond sweets), roasted sweet potatoes and sweet wine. The Enciclopèdia Catalana describes it as a family meal on the night of 1 November, later moved to the evening before, and today Halloween shares the date with it.
The two customs used to meet on the street. Citing the folklorist Joan Amades, VilaWeb writes that Barcelona's chestnut sellers set up their stalls together near the Portal de l'Àngel on 1 November, and people bought chestnuts on the way home from visiting their dead. The chrysanthemum on the grave in the morning and the chestnuts at home in the evening are the same day in Catalonia.
Why chrysanthemums flower just in time for 1 November
A chrysanthemum is a short-day plant, which means it forms flower buds when the nights become long enough, not when it reaches a certain age. The LSU AgCenter puts the threshold at about 11 to 12 hours of darkness. What counts is darkness without a break, so a single lamp shining on the plant in the middle of the night can delay the buds or stop them.
In Barcelona the day drops below 12 hours in the last week of September, so from then on the night is longer than the day. That gives a chrysanthemum about five weeks to open its buds before 1 November, which is why the timing works out naturally in Spain. How day length changes city by city through autumn and winter is set out in the guide to houseplants in winter.
Growers make sure of the date rather than trusting the weather. The 1998 Horticultura article describes Spanish nurseries planting in June and July and grouping varieties that flower together, and some cover the plants in the greenhouse with black plastic for 10 to 15 nights. The black plastic makes the night longer artificially, so the buds form on schedule even in a warm September.
Chrysanthemums on All Saints' Day across Europe
Spain is not the only country that takes chrysanthemums to the cemetery. The table below gathers dated figures from Spain and four other European countries. Each row is a separate source and a separate year, so read them as a picture of how big the custom is, not as a ranking between countries.
In France the custom has a known starting point. The City of Paris writes that in 1919, for the first anniversary of the Armistice, every war memorial in France had to be decorated with flowers on 11 November, and the chrysanthemum was the flower in bloom. The habit later moved to the graves on All Saints' Day.
The meaning shifts from country to country. In Italy the chrysanthemum is so tied to the cemetery that it is not given as a present, so a plant for an Italian host is better chosen from a list of gifts for plant lovers. Far from Europe, in Japan, the same flower is the imperial emblem, and the Chōyō festival on 9 September celebrates it as a symbol of health and long life.
Chrysanthemum care after All Saints' Day, step by step
The chrysanthemums sold for All Saints are usually florist chrysanthemums, Chrysanthemum × morifolium bred for pots, and many people treat them as a one-season plant. The plant is a perennial, though, which means it lives for several years if it survives the winter. The steps below follow the Royal Horticultural Society and the University of Missouri.
Chrysanthemum care in pots: water and light
A pot dries out faster than a garden bed, and the RHS advice for containers is never to let the compost dry out completely and never to let it stay waterlogged. Check by touch rather than by date. A pot in a sunny Valencia window in October dries much faster than the same pot in a cool hallway in Lille, so no fixed watering day fits both.
Light decides the next year's flowers. Outdoors a chrysanthemum wants full sun, the same south facing balcony spot a lavender wants, and Clemson's extension service warns that plants grown in shade do very poorly the following year. Indoors it is a guest for a few weeks, not a houseplant. If you want a plant that lives inside all year, choose from the easy house plants instead.
Will a potted chrysanthemum flower again next autumn
A potted chrysanthemum flowers again if it survives the winter and gets the long nights it needs in September. Florist varieties are less hardy than garden ones. The RHS rates the pot variety 'Fantasy' H3, which means it tolerates about −5 to 1 °C and needs protection in a hard winter, so where winter nights fall below −5 °C, as they can in Berlin or Warsaw, the pot needs to come indoors.
Two things stop the buds. Light at night from a street lamp or a lit window breaks the darkness the plant measures. Heat delays them too, and Purdue University notes that repeated nights above 24 °C cause what growers call heat delay, a real risk in a hot September in Seville. Why some flowering plants bloom again at home and others do not is covered in the guide to indoor flowering plants.
A pot brought indoors for the winter needs less water than it did in flower, because a cut-back plant that is barely growing uses very little. Compost kept wet in a warm room is also where fungus gnats breed, which is one more reason to keep it only just moist until spring.
Are chrysanthemums safe for cats and dogs
No. The ASPCA lists chrysanthemums as toxic to dogs, cats and horses. The plant contains sesquiterpene lactones and pyrethrins, and the signs of poisoning it lists are vomiting, diarrhoea, drooling, loss of coordination and skin irritation.
If a pot comes home after All Saints and you have a cat that chews leaves, keep it on a balcony the cat cannot reach rather than on a windowsill. Plants that are safe around pets are marked in the plant care guide, which you can filter by that answer.
How we know about chrysanthemums and All Saints' Day
Every figure on this page comes from a named source with its year, and the one thing nobody has measured is how long a florist chrysanthemum flowers in your living room.
Conclusion - chrysanthemum care
Spain buys chrysanthemums on 1 November because the plant flowers by itself once the nights pass about 11 to 12 hours, and growers can steer it to the date. It is the flower of the cemetery visit in Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Poland, and in Catalonia it shares the day with the Castanyada.
The pot does not have to go in the bin after the holiday. Cut it back to about 20 cm, keep it bright, cool and above 4 °C through winter, pinch it in spring, and give it dark nights in September. Then it flowers again for the next 1 November.
References