Chrysanthemum Dendranthema morifolium Tzvel.] is an ornamental plant grown under long-term artificial cultivation conditions. In production, early Chrysanthemum blossoms are often promoted by artificial short-day treatment. However, we found that the flower colour of Chrysanthemum blossoms induced by artificial short-day treatment was lighter than those induced by the natural photoperiod. To explore the intrinsic mechanism of colour fading in flowers, we performed full-length transcriptome sequencing of Chrysanthemum morifolium cv. 'Jinbeidahong' using single-molecule real-time sequencing and RNA-sequencing under natural daylight (ND) and short daylight (SD) conditions. The clustered transcriptome sequences were assigned to various databases, such as NCBI, Swiss-Prot, Gene Ontology and so on. The comparative results of digital gene expression analysis revealed that there were differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) in the four stages under ND and SD conditions. In addition, the expression patterns of anthocyanin biosynthesis structural genes were verified by quantitative real-time PCR. The major regulators of the light signalling ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL5 genes were markedly upregulated under ND conditions. The patterns of anthocyanin accumulation were consistent with the expression patterns of CHI1 and 3GT1. The results showed that the anthocyanin synthesis is tightly regulated by the photoperiod, which will be useful for molecular breeding of Chrysanthemum. • The flower colour of Chrysanthemum blossoms induced by artificial short-day treatment was lighter than those induced by the natural photoperiod. • The clustered sequences were used for functional annotation (GO, NR, KEGG, and KOG), identification and distribution analysis of simple sequence repeat loci, and prediction of coding sequences, transposons and retrotransposons by full-length transcriptome sequencing of Chrysanthemum. • Transcriptome analysis of C. morifolium 'Jinbeidahong' revealed that the biosynthesis of anthocyanin is tightly regulated by the photoperiod. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]