From Daffodil: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Most Popular Spring Flower by Noel Kingsbury:
“All wild daffodil species have now been used by daffodil breeders to produce the approximately twenty-seven thousand registered varieties, although the vast majority of garden and florist varieties are derived from genes from a limited number of species….
“The average garden daffodil has a big yellow flower with a big trumpet. ‘King Alfred’ (John Kendall, UK, 1899) is the best known and is everybody’s idea of a typical daffodil. It is derived from an Iberian species, Narcissus hispanicus, and if anything deserves the title of “ur-daffodil,” it is this. Narcissus hispanicus is a splendid plant, sturdy, richly coloured, early, and free-flowering. Only its distinctive perianth segments mark it out, as they are narrow and twisted — elegant but unlike the solid background for the trumpet we are used to. ‘King Alfred’ is a good example of [a Trumpet Daffodil], where each stem has a single flower where the length of the cup (i.e., the trumpet) is greater than or equal to the length of the perianth segments.
“Any cursory look at a collection of daffodils or at the pictures above the sale bins in a garden centre shows that there is a great deal of variation: there are white flowers and pale flowers, wide trumpets, narrow trumpets, trumpets which flare out a bit, and trumpets which veer towards orange, or even red-orange. There is often a difference in colour between the perianth segments and the cup… — these are referred to as bicolours, and it seems to be the general pattern that the cup is a richer yellow than the perianth segments. Except that there are some where the cup is paler than the perianth segments — these are known as reverse bicolours.”
From “From the Night of Forebeing” by Francis Thompson in Other Men’s Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry compiled by Archibald Percival Wavell:
Cast wide the folding doorways of the East,
For now is light increased!
And the wind-besomed chambers of the air,
See they be garnished fair;
And look the ways exhale some precious odours,
And set ye all about wild-breathing spice,
Most fit for Paradise!
Now is no time for sober gravity,
Season enough has Nature to be wise;
But now discinct, with raiment glittering free,
Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies
With festal footing and bold joyance sweet,
And let the earth be drunken and carouse!
For lo, into her house
Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet,
And all things are made young with young desires;
And all for her is light increased
In yellow stars and yellow daffodils….
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photos of the earliest daffodils that pop out of the ground in late February and early March here in the Southeast — where one can find them in bunches adding pre-spring color to yards, along sidewalks, and at places like Oakland Cemetery. The photos in this first post were all taken here…
… at a gated memorial garden in one of the cemetery’s oldest sections, where it’s fun to try and photograph the daffodils from different angles outside the fence, while using the wrought-iron bench or the black steel fenceposts as elements of the backgrounds.
The photos in these two posts are of daffodils I like to call yellow-yellow, because both the flower petals and their trumpets are shades of the same yellow color. As the season progresses over the next couple of weeks, others with alternating combinations of white, yellow, and orange will make an appearance, even as the yellow-yellow ones continue their bloom cycle.
As you can see from the photos, it was an overcast day when I took them, yet the colors are still so luminous that each of the flowers treats our eyes to a nice glow. One effect of the filtered lighting, in this case, is to add a little saturation to the daffodil trumpets, giving them a slight yellow-orange color cast that contrasts with the more translucent yellow of the petals surrounding the trumpets. Overall, though, the bright color is an attraction signal for pollinators, especially at this time of year when much of the surrounding landscape is still covered in its flat winter shades of brown and gray. While the gardens still wear this winter coat, the daffodils and the flower clusters they create are highly visible from long distances to both humans with their cameras and those emerging pollinators that want to get a jump on their spring business.
Thanks for taking a look!
Beautiful. They’re my favorites.
Thank you! It was good to see the daffodils coming back!