Nipponanthemum Week

In week 2008/45, it's the remarkable Nipponanthemum which attracts wonderment as its white, daisy-like flowers come into full bloom, absurdly late in the year. We have set it off with winter Chrysanthemum indicum, which began flowering a week earlier in purple at this time, perhaps the last of the common perennials to flower in the Zone 8 cycle. Nipponanthemum is a subshrub, with woody shoots that survive the winter snows to come back each year with pale green, star-shaped leaves. The autumn stripping of the trees continues: now it is the turn of Cornus to turn brown and red.