From “The Hybridiser’s Tale” in Daffodil: The Biography of a Flower by Helen O’Neill:
“There is probably no more daffodil-like daffodil than the Division 1a cracker called ‘King Alfred’, a plant so robust it has dwelt in my mother’s garden for at least the better part of a century…. As American Daffodil Society founding member George S. Lee Jr. pointed out in the Society’s 1966 Daffodil Handbook, sixty-seven years after this daffodil’s debut, it remained the most widely grown variety.
“‘Without question, the creation of King Alfred . . . was the greatest single advance ever made in the progress of daffodils,’ Lee wrote. ‘Those who think there is only one daffodil — the yellow trumpet seen in florists’ windows — have King Alfred in mind.’
“Upon its debut in 1899 this radiant flower immediately won over the Royal Horticultural Society’s Narcissus committee with its charisma, size, regal bearing and richly uniform gold tone. That year happened to be the millennial anniversary of the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great’s death, hence its name. Percy Kendall, a grower from Devon, brought the flower to the committee, but Percy had not bred this flower; his father, John Kendall, a daffodil enthusiast and former solicitor who died nine years earlier, had. John was well known in the daffodil world and for the committee members, seeing ‘King Alfred’ must have been like meeting a ghost….”
From “Home Thoughts in Laventie” by E. Wyndham Tennant in Poems of To-day: Second Series by The English Association:
Beyond the church whose pitted spire
Seems balanced on a strand
Of swaying stone and tottering brick
Two roofless ruins stand,
And here behind the wreckage where the back wall
should have been
We found a garden green.
The grass was never trodden on,
The little path of gravel
Was overgrown with celandine,
No other folk did travel
Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse
Running from house to house.
So all among the vivid blades
Of soft and tender grass
We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
That pass and ever pass
In noisy continuity until their very rattle
Seems in itself a battle.
At length we rose up from this ease
Of tranquil happy mind,
And searched the garden’s little length
A fresh pleasaunce to find;
And there some yellow daffodils
And jasmine hanging high
Did rest the tired eye….
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photos of early yellow-yellow daffodils that I took last week. The first post is Rise of the Yellow-Yellow Daffodils (1 of 2).
About half of the photos in this post were taken here…
… where the plants seemed perfectly happy to cling to a damp, steep, leaf-filled hill.
I took this group of photos from the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill — which you can see in the lower right corner — having discovered that I couldn’t stand on the hill and lean in to take close-up photos without tipping over. It’s steeper than it looks in the photo and was still soggy from the previous day’s thunderstorms. That I couldn’t get physically closer to the flowers (praise be the zoom lens!) got me thinking about something: after long, drenching rains, why didn’t the plants just let loose and tumble down the hill? Of course they have roots, but I puzzled on the possibility that there was something about daffodils that might make them resilient enough to stick-put despite relentless assaults from the clouds.
So — as one does! — I approached my research assistant with a tentative question: “I recently took some photographs of daffodils growing on the side of a steep hill…. I couldn’t help but wonder how they manage to stay in place there, especially since we’d had a lot of recent rain. What keeps them from just detaching from the soil and falling down the hill?”
To wit (or “to which”), Claude responded with a nice overview of the daffodil’s special skills:
Daffodils have an impressive ability to anchor themselves on steep slopes through several adaptations:
Their bulb and root system is their primary anchor. Daffodil bulbs are surrounded by fibrous roots that spread outward and downward, creating a network that grips the soil effectively. The bulb itself can work its way deeper into the soil over time through contractile roots — specialized roots that can contract and literally pull the bulb deeper into the ground.
The bulb shape is also advantageous on slopes. Rather than being perfectly round, daffodil bulbs are somewhat elongated and pointed at the top, which helps them wedge into soil crevices. This teardrop shape provides stability against downward forces.
Over time, daffodils naturalize by producing offsets (daughter bulbs) that grow adjacent to the parent bulb. These create dense clumps with intertwined root systems that significantly increase their collective anchoring power — essentially forming natural retaining structures within the soil…. Their strong, fibrous stems can flex without breaking during wind or rain.
The ability to grow successfully on steep terrain is actually one reason daffodils have been so successful both in the wild and in garden settings. Their effective anchoring system allows them to colonize areas that many other plants cannot, giving them an ecological advantage.
So the next time you plant or transplant some daffodils (or look at some pictures of daffodil roots), you will now know that their root system is “designed” to cling to soil on a hill, and that little cluster of bulbs that look a bit like radishes have their own job to do, acting as anchors to protect the plant by holding it in place.
This variety produces smaller flowers than those in my first post — though as you can see from these daffodils of the future, they’re still in their early stages of growing and blooming…
… and I’m sure I’ll make another trip back to the gardens to see how they’re progressing.
The rest of the daffodils are from the side of this walkway, where they’re being used as border plants so pollinators (and photographers) can get to them easily by ambling down the brick path.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
