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!
