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

Tag: double daffodils

White Double Daffodils (2 of 2)

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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)

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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!