KARACHI: Much to the delight of city dwellers, an exhibition featuring hundreds of chrysanthemums has opened at the Frere Hall after a long time.

The flower show, organised by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), attracted a large number of people on its second day on Tuesday.

More than 65 chrysanthemum varieties, some of them exotic, are on display.

“It’s after more than two decades that the KMC has organised an exhibition of chrysanthemums in the city,” said the KMC’s deputy director for parks and horticulture Tanveer Ahmed.

According to him, the department staff had decorated around 4,000 plants on the Frere Hall premises. “It’s the first time that so many varieties of chrysanthemums are on display at one place; the number is bigger than what people had at flowers shows in Multan and Lahore,” he said, adding that the large size of stunning flowers was an indication of plants’ good health.

All the plants, including the exotic ones, he said, were prepared in KMC nurseries. “The plant will continue to produce flowers till February. The baby plants that grow under a mature plant are transplanted in March and taken care of till they start blooming,” he said.

Native to Asia and northeastern Europe, the chrysanthemum has countless horticultural varieties and cultivars.

The KMC plans to hold another flower show of mixed plant species in February at the same venue.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2014