KARACHI, Jan 4: After a gap of five years, the 31st chrysanthemum flower exhibition was inaugurated by Naimatullah Khan, the city Nazim, at Bagh-i-Jinnah on Thursday afternoon.

About 5,000 pots and beautifully arranged groups of 16 pots in each group displayed incurved, reflexed, pompons, sigles, and incurving hybrids in more than one hundred hues and colours.

Chrysanthemums grew in the wild in northern Europe and China where horticulturists nurtured and developed it into different hybrids, colours and hues of a thousand hybrids. Some of the well-known hybrids bear names such as Her Majesty, Golden Empress, Model Perfection, Gazelles, Miss Nightingale, The Emperor of China, Sultan, Abdul Qadir, Bronze Dragon and so on.

From China the flower travelled to its flower-loving neighbour Japan from where it was smuggled into Europe. Europeans worked hard for years in gardens under the patronage of kings and emperors, developed several varieties, to decorate royal gardens, visited and pampered by the nobles, kings and queens of refined tastes.

Since the flower blooms and grows in cool climate, it does better in Lahore and Islamabad. In Karachi too horticulturists manage to grow flowers of exhibition level. Their efforts deserve to be praised.

Gulberg Town stood first, Jamshed Town second, there was no third, the KDA, Liaqatabad and Malir Towns received consolation certificates. 13 Town administrations out of 18 did not compete which they should have done. On the whole, the exhibition was of mediocre quality. Even the city district govt, which organized the show, did not participate. — Dr A. A. Quraishy