"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Daffodils: A Gathering (1 of 4)

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From “Lent Lilies” in Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:

“February in the South is a season of false promises. Unsuspecting blossoms are lured out during warm spells, only to be brutally reproached with the blue winds of northers. Strangely enough, there are certain plants whose peculiar demeanor suits them to this chancy weather. None is more welcome in gardens than the wild trumpet daffodil, or Lent lily, Narcissus pseudonarcissus.

“These wildlings are the earliest flowering of their race, usually appearing at the beginning of February. Perhaps because of the coldness of the season, the stems never reach as high as the daffodils that follow. The entire plant generally stays only six to eight inches tall.

“Despite this low stature, the blooms reach a respectable two to three inches in length. These proportions give the plants the charming aspect of alpine miniatures. Pale yellow, dog-eared petals frame the deeper yellow trumpets.

“The Lent lily is a wild European daffodil introduced to the South by early settlers. It has since spread far and wide in gardens, and has seeded and naturalized in fields and along roadsides. Although much like modern daffodils in construction, these wildflowers have a more relaxed appearance than their pedigreed descendants.

“Daffodils are strangely built flowers, with a unique apparatus for attracting pollinators and protecting pollen and nectar. The value of this becomes immediately apparent with an early flower like the Lent lily. All you need do is stand for a moment in a cold February sleet storm to appreciate the advantage of the trumpet-shaped coronas, which provide shelter to pollen and to the brave bees and other insects who venture out to visit the blossoms.”

From “The Groves of Blarney” by Richard Alfred Milliken in The Penguin Book of Irish Verse, introduced and edited by Brendan Kennelly: 

The groves of Blarney
They look so charming,
Down by the purling
Of sweet, silent brooks,
Being banked with posies
That spontaneous grow there,
Planted in order
By the sweet ‘Rock Close’.
‘Tis there the daisy
And the sweet carnation,
The blooming pink
And the rose so fair,
The daffodowndilly,
Likewise the lily,
All flowers that scent
The sweet, fragrant air…

Hello!

This is the first of four posts exploring four daffodil varieties that were mixing it up at Oakland Cemetery earlier this year. Oakland’s daffodils tend to flood the grounds from late February through the end of March, with some later-bloomers extending into early April. They’re often harbingers of the early or late arrival of spring — like this year, when warmer temperatures brought them out about eleven days earlier than usual because they’re more responsive to the environmental conditions than to the dates on our calendars.

Here are examples of the four varieties…

… that I’ve identified (from left to right, top to bottom) as Narcissus pseudonarcissus, Narcissus × incomparabilis, Narcissus tazetta, and Narcissus poeticus. Each species has its own stories to reveal, and comparing them to each other can lead to an unlimited number of related threads about their botanical and breeding characteristics, their history, and how they’ve been used in garden landscaping over several centuries. And comparing just these four — selected from dozens of species present on Oakland’s grounds — shows how visually diverse daffodils really are, from the more commonly recognized flower form in the first photo to something that almost looks like a plant from another species in the last photo. Identifying individual daffodil species can be a challenge, but this quad shows how the length and shape of the flowers’ coronas vary among them, and how the flower petals demonstrate varying degrees of length as well as curved or pointed edges — and these two characteristics together can be used to sort out their correct names.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus has the longest corona and with similarly long petals surrounding it; Narcissus × incomparabilis has a wider, flatter corona, often ruffled, with shorter curved flower petals; Narcissus tazetta typically has a short but bright red-orange corona with round (slightly crumpled, especially as they age) flower petals; and Narcissus poeticus has petals that are similar to those of Narcissus tazetta but makes itself distinct by a corona with a colorful edge that led to one of its common names, Pheasant-eye Daffodil. Pheasant-eye coronas are often saturated yellow with red-orange edging; but the ones I photographed this year have a much lighter, nearly white ground color that is actually a blend of pale yellow and very light green. This could mean the flowers had aged enough that the yellow component had faded; or, as likely, they’re simply a variant that produces a whiter corona. Either way, I found them interesting because the coronas were so close to white, a presentation I had not seen before in my stomps through Oakland.

Most of the daffodils in this post and the second one live here…

… where they add color to the corner of a large field and are somewhat sheltered by a Japanese Maple and surrounding shrubs. Our first species — Narcissus pseudonarcissus — is the quintessential daffodil, featuring the easily recognized yellow-orange color with flowers that often tip or nod, happily toward the sun. These are the “golden daffodils” starring in the well-known poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth, where their prominent billing introduces many starry, twinkling, dancing, waving, and colorful metaphors that persist to this day. Narcissus pseudonarcissus has acquired numerous common names over centuries — such as Wild Daffodil, Lent Lily or Lenten Lily, and Bell Rose. Their intriguing folk-name Daffodowndilly (or Daffadowndilly) can be found as far back as the sixteenth century (in The Herball, or, Generall historie of plantes by John Gerard) and in many poems such as Daffodowndilly by A. A. Milne and the excerpt from “The Groves of Blarney” by Richard Alfred Milliken that I included up-top. Common names that seem to cross species — like lily or rose for daffodils — are not unusual, as we’ve often seen here among my posts, and reflect visual similarities among plants and flowers from early botanical study that are never quite shaken off by later, more precise species or family identifications.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Campernelle Daffodils

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From “Hybrids of the Jonquil Group” in Daffodils and Narcissi: A Complete Guide to the Narcissus Family by Michael James Jefferson-Brown:

“Sheltering under the specific name N. odorus bestowed by Linnaeus are a series of hybrid plants, probably all arising from N. pseudo-narcissus × N. jonquilla, that has long been grown in gardens. N. odorus is the plant also known as the Campernelle Jonquil. In stature it is somewhat larger than N. jonquilla, has broader channelled dark green leaves and flower stems that carry an umbel of larger flowers than those of N. jonquilla with broader petals and a larger lobed cup….

“This larger plant is a very free-flowering variety of exceptional value in the border as well as in the rock garden. It is tall, reaching a foot in height, with erect, dark green shining foliage and many-headed stems of bright golden flowers. It will produce such quantities of bloom that a drift or clump of plants will remain a picture for a long period….”

From “Border Flowers” in Flowers and Their Histories by Alice M. Coats:

“The Jonquil section consists of those small, round-leaved, sweet-scented narcissi that take their name from the Spanish junquillo, a rush; and as in the case of the other groups, the principal species were already cultivated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [John] Gerard grew N. jonquilla, and [John] Parkinson added the double form, and three varieties of the larger Campernelle Jonquil, N. odorus.”

From “Spring” in Singed Leaves: A Book of Haiku Poetry by Marshall Hryciuk:

the orange barely inside
              the yellow jonquil

screech of the nighthawk

Hello!

This post contains a series of photographs of a daffodil species I’ve often encountered at Oakland Cemetery that I recently learned is most likely Narcissus x odorus, commonly known as the Campernelle Daffodil. The plant’s status as a hybrid — as described above, of Narcissus pseudo-narcissus and Narcissus jonquilla — means there’s some ambiguity in my identification, given how many daffodil crosses there are. But the plant does visually demonstrate characteristics of the known hybrid, especially the size and shape of the flower bloom, its coloration, and the rush-like leaves surrounding each blooming stem.

The term “rushes” (from “jonquil” or the Spanish word “junquillo”) describes the plant’s slender leaves, which vary from somewhat flat to cylindrical, often displaying — as many daffodil leaves do — a blend of green and aqua blue colors. The abundant blooms — mixed among the plant’s tall leaves at about the same height — display single shades of yellow regardless of lighting conditions. Their tendency to wave in a breeze as they bend toward the sun creates moving dots of color filling the scene where I photographed them. The flowers themselves are smaller than those of many daffodils, but are large for daffodils in the jonquil division — which helps explain why they’re sometimes called Giant Jonquils instead of Campernelles.

Of daffodils that have posed for me at Oakland, this variant shows the most consistent yellow color between the petals and corona. To the extent that some of the flowers appear to show shades of orange, that’s typically how we interpret darker or more shadowed yellow color — yellow itself containing tones that vary from a pale color to one just inside the range of colors we see as orange. When I examine the colors of the flower petals in Lightroom, Lightroom finds orange only in the darkest sections of the flower and in just a few pixels — “the orange barely visible” as in the Haiku I included above — and that orange disappears if you tip the flower toward the light.

I hadn’t really planned it this way, but the last two series of posts along with this one constitute a “walking tour” of one of Oakland’s named sections: Bell Tower Ridge, designated that way because its geographic elevation is higher than the rest of the property, and it’s adjacent to the 1899 Bell Tower that was recently rehabilitated from a visitor center to an event space.

Through the photographs, we stepped our way from Lady Banks’ Rose at the intersection near the Bell Tower building…

… to the Duncan memorial with white double Narcissus tazetta daffodils, where we noted the presence of an aged gazebo…

… to pass by the gazebo and find it located within the subject of this post, with Campernelle Daffodils as border plants to one of Oakland’s most recognizable buildings, the E. W. Marsh Mausoleum — an example of Gothic Revival architecture constructed in 1890 and featuring two six-foot-tall bronze urns at its entrance.

The contrast in scale between the relatively small, scattered groups of Campernelles and the monuments they accentuate could very well have been intentional. It was common in the decades of the cemetery’s founding and early Victorian garden design to incorporate landscaping and border plants to emulate wild-like conditions. This approach would create visual characteristics blending the dominating stone monuments and structures with soft, colorful forms from he natural world, where daffodils would occupy sunnier boundary regions and proliferate in somewhat random clumps. The 1894 book The Wild Garden by William Robinson — highly influential in the decades aligned with Oakland’s development — described this approach as “Narcissus meadow gardening” where daffodil varieties were planted to bloom in succession, in large volumes, and left to propagate unimpeded. As Robinson explained (with jonquil daffodils and Narcissus poeticus as examples):

“A very delightful feature of the Narcissus meadow gardening is the way great groups follow each other in the fields. When the Star Narcissi begin to fade a little in their beauty the Poets follow, and as I write this paper we have the most beautiful picture I have ever seen in cultivation….

“Five years ago I cleared a little valley of various fences, and so opened a pretty view. Through the meadow runs a streamlet. We grouped the Poet’s Narcissus near it, and through a grove of Oaks on a rising side of the field. We have had some beauty every year since; but this year, the plants having become established, or very happy for some other reason, the whole thing was a picture such as one might see in an Alpine valley!

“The flowers were large and beautiful when seen near at hand, and the effect in the distance delightful. This may, perhaps, serve to show that this kind of work will bring gardening into a line with art, and that the artist need not be for ever divorced from the garden, by geometrical patterns which cannot possibly interest anybody accustomed to drawing beautiful forms and scenes. I need say no more to show the good qualities of this group of plants for wild gardening, many places having much greater advantages than mine for showing their beauty in the rich stretches of grass by pleasure-ground walks. Various kinds of places may be adorned by Narcissi in this way — meadows, woods, copses, wood walks, and drives through ornamental woodland and pleasure grounds….”

Campernelles are heirloom daffodils, so their history as old garden plants also aligns with both Robinson’s garden design concepts and how Victorian gardens and garden memorials evolved, and they would have been thought of as heirlooms in the decades leading to the rise of Victorian gardens. If the relationships between these subjects interest you, the article Heirloom ‘Campernelle’ has a nice overview of the plant’s history and its use, as well as several photos showing the kind of placement we see at Oakland — where clusters of plants create color and structure in the landscape but the plants are still permitted to venture out on their own and propagate wildly.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

White Double Daffodils (2 of 2)

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From “Daffodil: Spring’s Messenger” in The Story of Flowers: And How They Changed the Way We Live by Noel Kingsbury:

“At the turn of the nineteenth century William Herbert, a lifelong enthusiastic plant-breeder, made a study of daffodils, showing through experimental breeding that they hybridized naturally. This contributed to his developing a version of the theory of evolution, decades before Charles Darwin. Another country cleric, George Engleheart, later in the century, played a crucial role in the development of the modern daffodil; his ‘Will Scarlett’, with its dramatic orange cup, was quite unlike anything else that had been seen, and led to a whole new vein of breeding. Daffodil-growing took a leap forwards in the late nineteenth century, when two key British gardeners, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, showed how easy it was to plant them in rough grass and watch them come up year after year. This helped to stimulate major commercial development in the century that followed….

“The white, heavily scented N. tazetta has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and was mentioned by classical writers: Homer, Virgil and Ovid. The Silk Road took it to China, where it has long been used in the Spring Festival. Pockets of it naturalized all along the route.

“The botanical name commemorates the Greek legend of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection; this is also possibly a reference to the plant’s supposed (although not well documented) narcotic properties. The scent of some species is indeed so strong that people can be overcome by headaches. The range of species is wide, and includes a number of flower shapes, although all have the distinctive trumpet-like corona, which early twenty-first-century research indicates is unique to Narcissus.”

From “Spring in the South” by Davie M. Herndon in Our World’s Most Beloved Poems, edited by John Campbell:

Crocus blooming at the mailbox,
Yards brightened up with yellow bells,
White spirea and snowy bridal wreath —
That Spring is here it’s easy to tell.

White narcissus and snowdrops small,
Hosts of golden daffodils,
Hyacinths in their waxen hues
All the air their perfume fills.

Tulip trees burst in lilac bloom
While in many hues azaleas dress;
And all the vari-colored bulbs
Through the warm earth gently press.

Camellias nestle on dark green stems —
Pink, white, rose-all three of these;
Wisteria of lavendar and deep purple shade
Drooping gracefully from tall pine trees.

Lawns all abloom wherever you look —
Blossoming dogwoods grace every way,
Heavily laden as with myriad snowflakes —
Hasn’t God made a beautiful display?

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photos of white double Narcissus tazetta daffodils that I took at Oakland Cemetery on March 30. The first post is White Double Daffodils (1 of 2).

In this post, we take a closer look at the flower structures — a bee’s eye view! — showing how the plants produce inflorescence that may cluster horizontally or vertically or assemble into tiny bouquets. In some cases — when a flower is more isolated from the rest of the gang — it may develop a single bloom atop a sturdy stem or arc gracefully toward the light if the bloom is large and heavy. And as I explained in the previous post, you can also see how each one contains the yellow/orange rippled remnants of what would have been a recognizable corona in a daffodil that had not evolved into a double form.

I selected the poem at the top of the post because of its visual intensity and the way it quite accurately represents the sequential timeline of flowers blooming in the southeast — from the late winter appearance of crocus and spirea, through the early and middle spring appearance of the remaining plants the poet describes. Of course I also noticed that I’ve photographed all but two of the plants included in the poem — mainly at Oakland, but some in my own yard — and posted them here over the past few years. I added links to those tagged posts throughout the poem, if you’d like to explore more of my photography and writing in that somewhat random way.

Thanks for taking a look!