Garland chrysanthemum (shungiku)

Garland chrysanthemum are one of the most popular vegetable in hot pot, it smell are aromatic and bring wonderful taste into the pot. The flower look similar to daisy as both of them belong to asteraceae, very attractive to girls. It divided into Broad leaf species and small leaf species. Broad leaf species with less serrated, more rounded, thicker and larger leaves, in Cantonese we called it "tong ho" directly. For the small leaf species, they have small and deeply serrated or lobed leaves and grows faster, we called it "emperor vegetable" or "shungiku" directly. This vegetable is quite popular in Natural organic farm for using in hot pot. We can buy this vegetable freshly in China during winter time, many vegetables are fluctuated in markets.

For its origin, garland chrysanthemum is an ornamental plant within Europe. After the importation of this veggie to China during Song dynasty, it has become tasty Asian vegetable in Chinese culture.

I grew garland chrysanthemum in 2013, the species I chose was small leaf species "Emperor vegetable". I sowed the seed by mixing the sand and spread them to the ground evenly; they took 3 days to germinate with high germination rate. Because I used too much seeds, they grew intensively, thus need to remove weak seedling to restore enough space for those healthy seedling, those week seedling that I eliminated used as young chrysanthemum and cook it with other vegetables.

After one and half month, I harvested the larger emperor veggie by cutting the top from the bottom of the stem continuously each week, until the middle of April.

Other holiday farmer in Ma On Shan grew "Tong ho" instead, because this variant provide a stronger taste compare to "Emperor Vegetable". For this variant, seeds are sowed within seedling trays by Mr. Wong, raised up for at least a month before it was suitable for transfer to the ground.

For the food chemistry of Garland chrysanthemum, camphor (29.2%), alpha-pinene (14.8%), lyratyl acetate (9.8%) and Beta-pinene (8.5%) can be found.(1) Especially plants in Italy, the major components are trans-tonghaosu (12.4–17.8%), cis-chrysanthenyl acetate (5.4–14.5%), trans-chrysanthenyl acetate (5.5–6.7%) and camphor(5.8–7.5%).(1) Those compound are belongs to several odoriferous group, which found in the essential oil of the flower head.(1)

Compounds showed antioxidant effect for removal of free radical. Those compound shows effect of scavenge free radical, which is an effective antioxidant.(1) It shows effect to decolorized the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) solution, which indicate it may able to cleave the endogenous free radical in our body. (1)

Antimicrobial properties were found among those compounds. (1) They used the paper-disk diffusion method for the evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of the essential oil.(1) Bacteria like Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhymurium, Candida albicans, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus are collected from different location for test.(1) They used Mueller-Hinton media plates to culture the bacteria.(1) For the temperature and time, they used 37 ◦C for 24 h for bacteria and 30 ◦C for 48 h for the fungi - Candida albicans.(1) Then they measured the diameters of inhibition zones (Clear zone) in millimetre (mm). They will consider the test is inactive when the diameter of the zone equal or smaller than 6 mm.(1)

Bacteria are inhibited within compound, which help reduce need of antibiotic and antimicrobial chemotherapy. For the results, it shows high activity against Gram-positive bacteria like (B. aereus and S. aureus) by forming inhibition zone larger than 6mm.(1) But it cannot inhibit gram negative bacteria like E.coli, salmonella. (1) Also it is effectiveness to against fungi like candida albicans.(1) They found that restrictive outer membrane barrier presents in gram negative bacteria, which induce the high level of intrinsic resistance to essential oil and its active components.(1)

1. Hosni K, Hassen I, Sebei H, Casabianca H. Secondary metabolites from Chrysanthemum coronarium (Garland) flowerheads: Chemical composition and biological activities. Industrial Crops and Products. 2013;44(Supplement C):263-71.