Chrysanthemum: The Spectre Plant
Chrysanthemums grow all over the Mikado’s empire, save in Himaji, where it is ill luck to raise them, for this reason: In a castle of thirty towers in that city lived a lord who employed a servant named Okiku (kiku, chrysanthemum) to look after his bronzes, figures of brass, jewels, shrines, carvings, crystals, porcelains, and other works of art. Among these objects were ten dishes of gold. In counting the dishes one morning she discovered that one was missing, and, though innocent of its loss, she so dreaded her employer’s anger that she cast herself into a well. Her ghost returns nightly to count the golden dishes, and cries loudly when it has counted nine, so distressing the populace that Okiku’s flower-the spectre plant-is no longer grown there.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company