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Double Daffodils in Yellow and Green, White and Orange

From “Narcissus” in Complete Guide to Gardening and Landscaping  by Time-Life Books:

“Daffodils are among the best known of spring-flowering bulbs, and although there are only about 70 species in the genus, there are hundreds of hybrids with varying flower forms….

“Members of the amaryllis family, daffodils arise from bulbs and generally have flat, narrow leaves. The flowers are usually nodding and may be white, yellow or bicolored. They are borne alone or several per stem. The bloom consists of a corona, or crown, which is cup- or trumpet-shaped, stands in the center, and may be long and tubular or short and ringlike. The corona is surrounded by six petallike segments that are referred to collectively as the perianth….

“Double Daffodils do not look like typical daffodils; there is usually no defined corona but instead a cluster of petaloids at the center, and there may be more than one bloom per stem. Plants range from 14 to 18 inches tall, and blooms are from 1 to 3 inches across. ‘Acropolis‘ grows 18 inches tall, usually blooms late in the season, and is white with red and white petaloids. ‘Cheerfulness‘ bears clusters of double white flowers that are fragrant. ‘Tahiti‘ grows 16 inches tall and usually blooms late in the season; it is yellow with red petaloids. ‘White Marvel‘ has pure white, double blooms on 14-inch plants. ‘Pencrebar‘ is a miniature that grows to 10 inches and has 2-inch, all-yellow flowers.”

From “Spellbinder” in An Indian Summer: 100 Recent Poems by Sacheverell Sitwell:

And as if from islands further west,
     deeper into the mists,
Not sea-green daffodils,
     but a green-yellow I had not known before,
Except in primroses,
     and then only in shadow near to the yews;
A green-yellow like starlight all morning through….

But I have noticed that in a day or two
     the petals of this daffodil become white-pointed,
That their flanges where they join the tube
     and was never sign of needle or thread,
Are white-stained,
     that the trumpet has its bell-mouth whitened too,
As if from sleeping in starlight
     that gives pallor and engenders dreams

So,
     folded in its own greenness,
This cluster,
     this isle of daffodils,
Dreams,
     and soon dies away


Hello!

Here we have photos of three double daffodil variants from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, that I took during the same photoshoot as the white doubles I posted previously (see White Double Daffodils (1 of 2) and White Double Daffodils (2 of 2)).

Unlike most of the daffodils I’ve encountered this spring that usually appear in large batches (see, for example, Rise of the Yellow-Yellow Daffodils (1 of 2)), these doubles appear to be rather solitary figures, with just a few friends or fans hanging around nearby. Doubles are less common than more “traditional” daffodils (it seems), and their genetics may simply dictate that they’re less likely to propagate wildly on their own, as their more promiscuous relatives tend to do. I don’t think I found more than a dozen individual stems of these three varieties, despite scouring the gardens for more and returning for a second hunting expedition. But while I didn’t find more that looked like these, I did come across yet another set of double white daffodils, similar to the Paperwhites I previously posted yet with a different flower structure and more orange color where the trumpets would have been in their ancestors. I’m still working on those photos and will post them up in a few days.

Those toward the center of the galleries below — with white petals and yellow-orange centers — are nearer in design to daffodils you might find anywhere with white petals and orange trumpets. But take a closer look and you can imagine how botanical engineering might have helped an orange trumpet evolve into overlapping petals with both colors of the flower reflected in the new structure. While the chemical and botanical work involved in creating these changes is beyond my knowledge or ability to explain well, it’s probable that variants like these started as a mutation — the appearance, perhaps, of a daffodil with malformed petals or a multicolored trumpet — which a horticulturalist could then foster by selective breeding. I learned from my research assistant that producing a successful variant like this — and producing one that can continue to be propagated — may take five years or more. And the evolutionary process does indeed start with the appearance of a natural mutation:

Mutations are the original source of what we now cultivate as double daffodils, and this process is a perfect example of how human observation and selective breeding can transform plant characteristics.

In nature, genetic mutations occur spontaneously and randomly. These mutations can cause various changes in plant structures, including: additional petal formation; transformation of reproductive organs into petal-like structures; and alterations in color or flower shape.

For double daffodils, these mutations typically involve a genetic change that causes: (1) stamens to transform into petals; (2) the corona (trumpet) to develop additional petal-like structures; or (3) an increase in the number of flower parts.

Early horticulturists like Peter Barr would meticulously examine large populations of daffodils, looking for these rare spontaneous mutations. When they found a plant with an unusual flower structure — like one with extra, more complex petals — they would carefully isolate that specific plant, propagate it through bulb division, and selectively breed it with other plants showing similar characteristics.

Think of it like a botanical treasure hunt. Most daffodils would look “normal,” but occasionally, a single plant would emerge with a dramatically different flower structure. These rare mutations became the foundation for entire new varieties of daffodils. The process is similar to how we’ve developed many cultivated plants — through patient observation of natural variations and deliberate selection. Double daffodils aren’t created in a laboratory, but emerge from careful observation of nature’s own genetic experiments.

Similarly, those with yellow and green petals are genetic variations of light green daffodils, with selective breeding and genetic modifications undertaken to enhance the (relatively rare among flowers) green colors along with gradually replacing the trumpets with a series of flower petals.

As you can see from the photos, the first batch of yellow and green doubles open in rather strange formations and present distinct bands of color that almost look like stripes; whereas those toward the end of this post have more orange with splashes of green. They, too, have a distinctive appearance as they open with a large number of piled flower petals, looking a bit like a shredded pom-pom — and, to say the truth — I first thought I was looking at a dead flower until I handled one of them and realized that they were as fully alive as they could be.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!













White Double Daffodils (2 of 2)

From “Growing the Earliest Daffodils in England” in Daffodil: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Most Popular Spring Flower by Noel Kingsbury:

“The Tamar Valley is a long, branching fjord of an estuary whose tidal branches penetrate deep into Cornwall, its main course acting as the boundary between Devon and Cornwall….

“[Its] slopes were once very intensively cultivated, with workers tending fruit, flowers, and vegetables in plots which they called gardens…. The area was so densely cultivated that it was said that even the railway lines were edged with rhubarb….

“The reason for the intense cultivation of the Tamar Valley, which really lasted less than a hundred years, was its combination of warm south- and west-facing slopes and the water, which moderates temperatures. Frosts were rare and light, and spring came early, almost earlier than anywhere else in Britain. This climate had been exploited for fruit growing since the 1700s, but in the late nineteenth century, local growers began to try other crops….


“Strawberries came first, then daffodils, and finally a great many other flower and florist crops, such as anemones and irises, along with rhubarb and other speciality crops. Daffodils really got going in the early years of the twentieth century with ‘Van Sion’ (now called ‘Telamonius Plenus’), a messy double dating back to the seventeenth century; ‘Maximus’, a Trumpet variety with an even longer history; ‘Ornatus’, a Poeticus type of recent French origin; and ‘Golden Spur’, a Trumpet discovered in a Dutch garden in the 1880s.

“What really launched the daffodil trade, however, was the discovery, allegedly by a local farmer, Septimus Jackson, of a new variety in a hedge, sometime in the 1880s. A double Poeticus type, white and with a heavy scent, the late-flowering plant was quickly dubbed ‘Tamar Double White’….


“By modern standards it is not a particularly attractive flower, but the scent was clearly something special. It also had a reputation for being difficult outside the valley. It took until the 1920s for there to be enough of it to become a worthwhile crop, but then it really took off and became a mainstay for the valley’s growers. Perhaps what made it really popular was its popularity as church decoration for the Whitsun festival, on the cusp of spring and summer….”

From “Feda: A Story in Feda: With Other Poems, Chiefly Lyrical by Rennell Rodd:

Then winter vanished in a mist of rain,
And the world smiled to see the spring again:
Then first of all the flowers on the hill
The violet came, and soon the daffodil,
And in the valley by the torrent bed
One morning you might find the drooping head
Of a white narcissus-star above the grass
Till in a little while you dared not pass
For fear of trampling them, and you would see
The crimson cup of that anemone….


Howdy!

This is the second of two posts with photographs of white double daffodils from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, that I took a few weeks ago. The first post is White Double Daffodils (1 of 2).

Thanks for taking a look!








White Double Daffodils (1 of 2)

From Garden Bulbs for the South by Scott Ogden:

“Along Mediterranean shorelines paperwhites and Chinese sacred lilies often occur together. Although closely related, they maintain separate populations because their genetic structures isolate them from one another. The paperwhite has a standard diploid (double) set of chromosomes. Its large cousin inherits a tetraploid (quadruple) complement. This accounts for the tremendous vigor of the Chinese sacred lily, and also suggests that hybrids between the two varieties will be sterile mules with a triploid set of genes. As we have already seen, such plants often make fine garden flowers.

“Crosses between
Narcissus tazetta and N. papyraceus have, in fact, occurred, and several have been cultivated since the 1600s. These mules possess a number of distinctive characters making them unlike either parent. Instead of gray-green leaves like paperwhites, or fountains of light green foliage like Chinese sacred lilies, these hybrids often produce lush groups of dark green leaves. Their foliage and flowers emerge later and withstand more cold than their parents. In the South they are among the most cherished garden heirlooms.

“The first to bloom is a striking plant with slender petals the color of old linen and small citron cups. If the winter is mild, as is often the case, dark green leaves emerge in November and bear flowering stems around the first of February. The effect of the starry blossoms with their cheerful yellow cups is charming, especially when the narcissi are growing around an old homestead nestled under pines.”

From “White Daffodils” in Now and Again: Poems by Kay Bourne:

You know those daffodils that are white
That gleam iridescent
They have them
In a garden
In Worthing.
All the gold of Herrick washed away,
Dancing like splendid ghosts,
That painting by Anne Redpath
The blue background with the jagged edges
Round the white space
Coming up all green and yellowy,
Delicate white daffodils
From a wood.
All this colour contained
In white daffodils.


Hello!

This is the first of two posts with photographs of white double daffodils from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, that I took a few weeks ago while it was still sort of winter around here.

I’ve photographed these flowers before (see Twelve Dozen Daffodils (8 of 8)) — though later in the spring. I actually wasn’t aware that this variant — probably Narcissus papyraceus (often called Paperwhites — bloomed as early as it did; the growth in these photos took place in mid- to late-February, despite some very cold days that punctuated that month. So on this trip I was able to capture their new buds, along with a few of the fully bloomed plants. I picked the quotation at the top of this post because I think the author was referring to this daffodil variant, given he’s writing about southern gardens, early blooming daffodils, white doubles, Paperwhites, and their late winter/early spring bloom time.

This is where these daffodils were growing…

… or, more accurately, here:

You see, the asymmetrical placement of the grave markers bothered me — so I took them out with Lightroom. As it turns out, though, a memorial section with no other plants but a couple of batches of daffodils and no actual memorial markers just looked like a small field — so I put those markers back! The ghosts who live under them were pleased, too, and they stopped nagging me about “doing AI” on photos of their home — though I was supposed to keep that a secret.

Flowers that get the “double daffodil” label are interesting to me: other than the rows of flower petals that overlap and look a bit like piled tissue, the flowers have been bred to diminish or eliminate one of the daffodil’s most distinctive features: the trumpet. As you look at these photos, notice that what remains of the trumpet is but a few swatches of yellow color around those petals at the center of each flower, which disappears entirely as you move toward the flower stems. I’m learning a little about how that genetic variation was engineered throughout the daffodil’s history, which I’ll share in the next post.

Thanks for taking a look!








Yellow Daffodils with Red and Orange Trumpets (2 of 2)

From “Gustave Caillebotte: The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers” in The impressionists at Argenteuil by Paul Hayes Tucker:

“Vibrant fields of yellow and orange daffodils stretch across the foreground of this dramatically composed view of the plains of Gennevilliers across the river from Argenteuil….

“Their proximity to one another makes their bold colors and the impasto of their petals particularly pungent. Shimmering with light, they recede sharply into the distance between fresh green fields on either side. Prefiguring abstract shapes that Kazimir Malevich would devise thirty years later, these assertive geometric forms rise high on the picture plane to end considerably above the midpoint of the scene.

“At the horizon we encounter the only vertical accents in the landscape: a band of trees that proceed from the left edge of the canvas to a point above the junction of the orange and yellow fields. There the trees become more distinguishable as a series of poplars that continues out of view on the right. Above this orderly arrangement of forms hangs a sky that has been subjected to an equally rigorous geometric sensibility and made into a strict, virtually uninterrupted rectangle. No cloud disturbs its surface, extending the expansiveness that the fields suggest.”

From “This Fevers Me” by Richard Eberhart in The Language of Spring: Poems for the Season of Renewal, selected by Robert Atwan:

This fevers me, this sun on green,
On grass glowing, this young spring.
The secret hallowing is come,
Regenerate sudden incarnation,
Mystery made visible
In growth, yet subtly veiled in all,
Ununderstandable in grass,
In flowers, and in the human heart,
This lyric mortal loveliness,
The earth breathing, and the sun.
The young lambs sport, none udderless.
Rabbits dash beneath the brush.
Crocuses have come; wind flowers
Tremble against quick April.
Violets put on the night’s blue,
Primroses wear the pale dawn,
The gold daffodils have stolen
From the sun….


Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring daffodils with yellow flower petals and rich red-orange trumpets. The first post — where I also explain the use of “red” to describe daffodil trumpets — is Yellow Daffodils with Red and Orange Trumpets (1 of 2).

These photos were all taken in the same general area, where fringe flower bushes provided background to the daffodils. Since the shrubs hadn’t started revealing their pink or purple fringies yet, the tiny oval leaves — in shades of dark blue-green — created a uniform color and texture that contrasted nicely with the yellow and orange (or do I mean “red”?) of the daffodils.

Whilst slinking around on the internet looking for some preambles for this post, I came across the quotation above about the painting “The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers” by Impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte (image borrowed from List of Paintings by Gustave Caillebotte) — which, conveniently for me, is a painting of yellow and orange daffodils:

The quotation introduced me to the term impasto — where paint is piled on thickly to create physical textures on the canvas, so that someone looking at the painting will see both the raised textures and the shadows beneath them, whose intensity will vary depending on their viewing angle or the available light. To get a better look at the texture Caillebotte created, click the image to see a larger version.

I liked this painting because it seems to represent the natural conditions I prefer for taking photos of flowers: overcast days with plenty of bright light filtered through the clouds, creating consistent shadow detail across the scene while still enabling the saturated, often glowing, colors to catch the eye. I also think the impasto effect combined with separate ramps of color leading from the painting’s foreground simulates how we would see this scene in real life: rich with color, emphasized with texture, and enhanced to simulate depth by the lines that converge at the horizon. Just like a photograph, a painting like this is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional scene: the artist uses different techniques and effects to trigger our brains to transition from two to three dimensions and lead us to consider the painting as symbolic of something real. We don’t normally think through these things when observing a painting or photograph; but we can still deconstruct them to understand the techniques that have been used.

When processing photographs — whether done in the camera, using presets or filters on photo sharing sites, or through enhancements made with photo-editing software — we try to blend both the documentary nature of photography with our sense of an experience that the photograph represents. Here, for example, is one of the photographs from the galleries below, before I’ve made any adjustments (other than removing dust or spots)…

… where, as you can see, the dynamic (or tonal) range of the image is narrow, leading — most apparently — to very little color differentiation between the yellow flower petals and the orange trumpets.

A photograph taken with a modern camera may start like this, as a relatively flat representation of a scene — something that roughly corresponds to the negatives produced by film cameras in terms of the potential for a finished image. This is even more true if the camera is set to take RAW images (where additional image detail is captured but you would seldom consider the image finished as taken); and is still true with image formats like JPG, where the camera tries to balance the colors and tones for you, resulting in a rather bland appearance overall. To state this as a stretched analogy to Caillebotte’s painting: it’s like the first layer of color the painter lays down, before painting additional layers and colors to simulate greater texture and depth.

Here we have the finished version of this image…

… where I’ve created more depth by: reducing color and texture in the background; adding a bit of color to the blue-green daffodil leaves in the foreground; and — most importantly — adding contrast, color, and texture to the flower petals, since the flowers are the subject of the photograph and the difference in color between the petals and the trumpets is a distinctive feature.

Here are the two images side-by-side, for comparison.

Gustave Caillebotte and his brother Martial were both interested in photography, so it’s likely true that their relationship influenced both Gustave’s paintings and Martial’s photography — a fascinating subject on its own that might lead towards a better understanding of how the two art forms blended in photography’s early history. If you’d like to read more about that, see In the Private World of the Caillebotte Brothers, Painter and Photographer — which describes an exhibition featuring art from each brother, and speculates on this two-way influence.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!







Yellow Daffodils with Red and Orange Trumpets (1 of 2)

From “Yellow and Orange Daffodils” in The Spring Garden by Michael Jefferson-Brown:

“‘Red’ in daffodil terminology means orange or deep orange….

“The colour is derived from the same pigment as the yellow, the more concentrated the pigment the richer the shade. It has been one of the major concerns of breeders from the early years of the century to produce richer orange colouring. A most important success fifty years ago was ‘Fortune.’ This early blooming kind is still an important commercial cut flower. It was a big jump ahead when introduced. Its pale tangerine orange has now long been surpassed, but its earliness still makes it important. Almost as early is the newer and richer ‘Armada‘ with broad sails as petals and with a bold crown of glowing orange. For earliness ‘Sacajawea,’ a ‘Fortune’ seedling, is perhaps the most promising.

“Many of the most attractive yellow and orange flowers failed as garden plants because the orange burnt or faded in the sun, but now very few kinds offered for sale have this defect. In fact the reverse happens with many new kinds. The blooms open gold and a not very exciting orange. ‘Ceylon‘ is an example, but as each day passes the orange of the crown grows in strength and brilliance till the flower is mature. Now we grow ‘Ceylon’ progeny and such early kinds as ‘Straight Flush‘, and deep coloured ‘Falstaff‘ and Vulcan.'”

From “The Months: March” in The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges by Robert Bridges:

Now carol the birds at dawn, and some new lay
Announceth a homecome voyager every day.
Beneath the tufted sallows the streamlet thrills
With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils.


Hello!

This is the first of two posts featuring photos of early March daffodils that all have something in common: their flower petals are yellow, and the trumpets (also known as coronas) are in shades of orange.

Or not orange, but “red” as I have just learned, and you can read about that in the quotation at the top of this post. Botanically speaking, the deep orange that appears in some daffodils is usually referred to as the color red — and the author of The Spring Garden describes how that came about. It’s not entirely clear if all occurrences of orange in daffodil trumpets should be called “red” — but I did wonder if shades of red might actually be present in some of these photos, because they look orange to the eyes (or at least to my eyes).

Using a color picker from ColorSlurp to select colors from the ruffled edge of the trumpet in the first three daffodil photos below yielded some interesting results. Here’s a screenshot of some of the colors ColorSlurp uncovered…

… whose names are as delightful as the range of red colors they describe:

Nevertheless, the red is quite subtle among daffodils with this deep orange color, and only exists at the saturated edges of the trumpets. I may have to take a trip back to see if these daffodils are still in bloom, and if I can find red with my eyes if I push my face close enough to the trumpet. I suppose it’s a bit nerdy to analyze colors in flowers to this level of detail — or so I thought until I realized that the presence of red that is not obvious to the eye means I could have accentuated the color and texture of the trumpet ruffles by adding some additional red color; and that at least one entire book (The Color Dictionary of Garden Flowers) analyzes colors among parts of flowers (including daffodils) with this kind of detail. So there is still much color-fun to be had!

The rest of the trumpets in these photographs read as different shades of yellow or orange but no red. Personally I’ve never seen any daffodils with trumpets that strike the eye or the camera as pure red, but apparently they do exist — as you can see here. Notable, perhaps, is that the distribution of color through selective breeding leads the petals to move closer to white as the trumpet moves closer to red. Absolutely fascinating!

Thanks for taking a look!