Mums are a different breed of plant in my opinion.  They start out from just a little piece of a branch from the mother plant, grow for 4 months, bloom, and then die for the winter.  If you plant them, they usually return the following year and will get much larger. 

Mums come in so many colors, yellow, Orange, bronze, red, purple, white, pink, and that is just the solid colors. 

Mums the word