“At the turn of the nineteenth century William Herbert, a lifelong enthusiastic plant-breeder, made a study of daffodils, showing through experimental breeding that they hybridized naturally. This contributed to his developing a version of the theory of evolution, decades before Charles Darwin. Another country cleric, George Engleheart, later in the century, played a crucial role in the development of the modern daffodil; his ‘Will Scarlett’, with its dramatic orange cup, was quite unlike anything else that had been seen, and led to a whole new vein of breeding. Daffodil-growing took a leap forwards in the late nineteenth century, when two key British gardeners, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, showed how easy it was to plant them in rough grass and watch them come up year after year. This helped to stimulate major commercial development in the century that followed….
“The white, heavily scented N. tazetta has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and was mentioned by classical writers: Homer, Virgil and Ovid. The Silk Road took it to China, where it has long been used in the Spring Festival. Pockets of it naturalized all along the route.
“The botanical name commemorates the Greek legend of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection; this is also possibly a reference to the plant’s supposed (although not well documented) narcotic properties. The scent of some species is indeed so strong that people can be overcome by headaches. The range of species is wide, and includes a number of flower shapes, although all have the distinctive trumpet-like corona, which early twenty-first-century research indicates is unique to Narcissus.”
Crocus blooming at the mailbox, Yards brightened up with yellow bells, White spirea and snowy bridal wreath — That Spring is here it’s easy to tell.
White narcissus and snowdrops small, Hosts of golden daffodils, Hyacinths in their waxen hues All the air their perfume fills.
Tulip trees burst in lilac bloom While in many hues azaleas dress; And all the vari-colored bulbs Through the warm earth gently press.
Camellias nestle on dark green stems — Pink, white, rose-all three of these; Wisteria of lavendar and deep purple shade Drooping gracefully from tall pine trees.
Lawns all abloom wherever you look — Blossoming dogwoods grace every way, Heavily laden as with myriad snowflakes — Hasn’t God made a beautiful display?
In this post, we take a closer look at the flower structures — a bee’s eye view! — showing how the plants produce inflorescence that may cluster horizontally or vertically or assemble into tiny bouquets. In some cases — when a flower is more isolated from the rest of the gang — it may develop a single bloom atop a sturdy stem or arc gracefully toward the light if the bloom is large and heavy. And as I explained in the previous post, you can also see how each one contains the yellow/orange rippled remnants of what would have been a recognizable corona in a daffodil that had not evolved into a double form.
I selected the poem at the top of the post because of its visual intensity and the way it quite accurately represents the sequential timeline of flowers blooming in the southeast — from the late winter appearance of crocus and spirea, through the early and middle spring appearance of the remaining plants the poet describes. Of course I also noticed that I’ve photographed all but two of the plants included in the poem — mainly at Oakland, but some in my own yard — and posted them here over the past few years. I added links to those tagged posts throughout the poem, if you’d like to explore more of my photography and writing in that somewhat random way.
“The standard pattern for flowers is for them to be made up of four whorls of tissue: sepals (which often form the protective bud), petals, stamens (carrying male pollen-bearing organs), and carpels (protecting the female organ)…. Debate among botanists has raged since the middle of the nineteenth century about whether the corona is derived from the stamens or the perianth segments; similar structures can be seen in other members of the amaryllis family, although it is thought that they arose independently. Now, it appears as if the question has been solved — the daffodil cup is a structure that has evolved independently of either perianth segments or stamens and is unique to the daffodil. What evolutionary advantage it serves remains open to question — possibly it helps directs pollinating insects or protects the stamens from rain.
“There are some seventy species of Narcissus, although some botanists might reduce this to fifty, and others increase to a hundred. As with many plant genera, there are a few species spread over a large area and a ‘centre of diversity,’ where a small area includes a much larger number of localised species. For the daffodil, that centre of diversity is the mountains of the Iberian peninsula (i.e., Spain and Portugal) and the mountains just across the water in the Maghreb (i.e., Morocco and Algeria). Only one species, N. pseudonarcissus, has a really wide distribution in western Europe; N. poeticus(the familiar pheasant’s eye) and the white N. serotinusare found across the regions immediately north of the Mediterranean, while the heavily fragrant white N. tazetta is found further eastwards around the Mediterranean into Iran.”
Winds across my garden, Damp and chill, Bring a breath of Springtime To my window sill From the ivory chalices, Filled with gold, Of my first narcissus Braving the cold.
Other flowers sleeping In their beds, Miss the fragile beauty Above their heads Where my white narcissus, Harbinger of Spring, Dances with the breezes While the robins sing.
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photos of a double form of the well-known daffodil Narcissus tazetta that I took at Oakland Cemetery on March 30. Each photo is of one or more flowers integrated into the memorial display shown below, one that represents a very typical and complex Victorian garden arrangement with a raised platform, large and richly surfaced stone walls, access steps, and varied plant populations providing visual interest with contrasting colors and textures.
This location is just a few steps beyond that of the Lady Banks’ Rose (Rosa banksiae var. lutea) I wrote about previously (see Discovering (and Rediscovering) Lady Banks’ Rose (3 of 4)), and — as you can see here — the Duncan memorial and some of the double Narcissus tazetta flowers are visible from a distance, toward the left side of this image from the earlier post.
This entire section of Oakland includes some of its oldest and most elaborate displays, and any single wider-angle photo necessarily includes elements from more than one memorial plot. The weathered gazebo you can see in the first image — which looks like it’s within the Duncan memorial — is actually part of another family section, shown here, where it is included as a representation of living activity among the headstones, memorial urns, and intricate mausoleum that I’ll write more about later — when I introduce photos of the tiny yellow daffodils providing abundant spring color to this scene.
I included the excerpt from Noel Kingsbury’s Daffodil: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Most Popular Spring Flower because its description of the parts of a flower and the distinctive corona (or cup or trumpet) of many daffodils can help us understand the unique characteristics of a double daffodil. As you can see from the galleries below, these daffodils don’t have coronas. They possess, instead, a genetic variation where the corona has mutated into a layer or layers of flower petals at the center of each bloom, surrounded by several additional rows of white petals. The yellow-orange color you see at the centers of these flowers would have been the corona, were it not for the mutation that caused the plant to essentially reconstruct that corona into petals instead.
This means — as the excerpt also implies — that double daffodils don’t possess the reproductive structures that are present in daffodils with coronas, so even if they attracted pollinator attention, they wouldn’t reproduce by pollination or seed. There is nothing, as it turns out, for the bugs and bees to do — so it’s quite convenient for the double daffodils that they’ve evolved to reproduce by bulb division. This garden space likely contains descendants of original white double daffodils planted decades ago, with succeeding generations enabled by human caretakers digging up and replanting regenerated daffodil bulbs to maintain the landscaping characteristics of this historical design.
“The art, hobby or profession of breeding garden varieties of daffodil is not of recent origin; it had already begun in Jacobean times, and instructions for raising seedlings were given by John Rea in 1665. The majority of early gardeners, however, seem to have been content to import their new varieties from the Continent, for Philip Miller in 1724 complained that ‘in England there are very few persons who have patience to propagate any of these flowers that way, it being commonly five years before they can expect to see the fruits of their labour’. It was not until Dean Herbert of Manchester conducted his experiments in hybridizing, in preparation for his book on the Amaryllidaceae, published in 1837, that interest in daffodil-raising was really aroused in England….
“His work inspired Edward Leeds of Manchester, William Backhouse of Darlington, and finally Peter Barr, to specialize in the flower. Peter Barr was justly called the Daffodil King; for besides founding the firm of Barr and Son, and continuing the development of the strains started by Backhouse and Leeds, he travelled extensively in Spain and southern Europe in search of wild daffodils, and was instrumental in restoring to our gardens many species that had been lost since the time of Parkinson….
“He also wrote a book called Ye Narcissus, and was largely responsible for the organization of the first Daffodil Conference in 1884. He died in 1909, but his work was carried on by George Herbert Engelheart, whose honorary title was Father of the Modern Daffodil. The first Daffodil Show was held at Birmingham in 1893; and the flower has made steady progress ever since. It has now become one of the world’s most popular flowers, and specialists devote to it the attention and care once lavished on the carnation, the tulip and the auricula. In 1903 the Rev. W. Wilks (then Secretary of the R.H.S.) expressed the opinion that no further advance in daffodil-breeding was either possible or desirable; but to us, looking back, the modern daffodil seems only to have been in its infancy at that date. Since then the lovely pink-cupped varieties have made their appearance, led by ‘Mrs. R. O. Backhouse‘ in 1923; and a later achievement was a trumpet daffodil with a white perianth and a scarlet cup exhibited by her son, Mr. W. O. Backhouse, in 1953….
“We may yet see an all-red daffodil, or a white-and-green trumpet, or even a shade approaching blue.”
I saw blue daffodils swaying in a lilac breeze one warm afternoon in May; a lime-green sun shone down from a pink-striped sky as below me dirty black cars crawled creepily back to their holes in the ground.
A bee buzzed brightly, a cat flew overhead and it was good to be alive.
Hello!
We have arrived at the end of Daffodil Season — which tends to start in February here in the Southeast and wind its way into late March or (if we’re lucky) early April. While I have photos of other flowers (such as snowflakes, tulips, dogwoods, and quinces) in my backlog, I’ll take a couple of trips to Oakland’s gardens in the next few days to see if there are any daffodils left. Most likely, early irises — probably white ones — have started to bloom, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they get my attention even if there are a few stray daffodils remaining.
The flowers in this series are a mix of four cultivars: the large white and yellow daffodils are identified as Narcissus × incomparabilis and Narcissus pseudonarcissus; the smaller ones are Narcissus tazetta and Narcissus poeticus. Toward the middle of the galleries, I’ve included four photos showing where the large daffodils were growing, in a shaded section of the gardens where you can listen to them shift in the wind as they bloom, while you rest on a stone memorial bench.
A funny thing happened on the way to writing this blog post. As a summary of early daffodil breeding efforts, I had selected the quotation at the top (from Flowers and Their Histories by Alice M. Coats) to wrap up my daffodil series, and noticed how she mentioned the future possibility of blue daffodils toward the end. Since the book was written in the 1970s, I wondered if progress had been made toward developing daffodil blues, especially since — as is often the case when I analyze colors produced by my camera — I’m very aware that white flowers will appear to have blue tones (something I wrote about here), depending on surrounding colors, the presence of cool sunlight in shadows, and the reflective qualities of the flower I photographed. So I started hunting down the elusive blue daffodils with a simple Google search, thinking that if they did exist, I’d link to their images so you could take a look.
Here’s a screenshot of my interaction with Google on the question of blue daffodils (poke for a larger version):
“Yes, blue daffodils are real” — I am told. Except they aren’t.
Notice the confidence with which Google’s AI has informed me that blue daffodils do indeed exist, while including an image of a painting of blue daffodils for reference. If you try an image search for blue daffodils, you’ll probably see that same painting among the results, along with pictures of blue daffodils which — this should be obvious — aren’t showing a natural blue color, but one added by an image editing program. Note also that toward the end of Google’s response, it mentions Gardens Illustrated, the well-known gardening and horticultural magazine, to which it provides (at the right of the response) a link to this article…
Does that date seem odd? Or maybe — if you know a minimalist amount of French like I do — you may have noticed that the blue daffodil cultivar’s name — Narcissus ‘Poisson d’Avril’ — appears to have the word “fish” (“poisson”) as part of its name. So a literal translation of that name would be “April Fish Daffodil” while a more accurate, contextual translation would be “April Fool’s Daffodil” since the historical French origins of April Fool’s Day often referenced fish instead of fools. It’s a clever pun on the part of Gardens Illustrated, one that does a nice job of obscuring the joke, and manages to combine gardening, plant breeding, history, and botany in a short but endearing article.
As someone who often can’t resist tunneling down a rabbit hole once I’ve stuck my head in, I decided to learn a little more about how prevalent the misinformation parroted (“hallucinated“) by Google’s AI was around the internet. I’m not going to link to the things I found (spam abounds under the covers) but you can certainly find these and other variations if you want to “do your own research.” And I discovered, among other things:
an AI-generated website describing the botanical history of blue daffodils, and which daffodils were used to breed them;
another AI-generated website which goes into detail about the chemical process used to create blue daffodils, which, after paragraphs of implausible but scientific-sounding words and phrases, points out at the end that they don’t actually exist;
yet another AI-generated website that considered Narcissus ‘Poisson d’Avril’ a real daffodil cultivar, and used a copied page about yellow daffodils from the same site, replacing “yellow” with “blue.”
references to their commercial availability for gardeners to purchase blue daffodils for their gardens by the year 2030;
websites describing how to grow and propagate them (presumably not until 2031 🙂 ), with links to photographs of flowers that are actually blue irises rather than daffodils;
repetition of content from the original April Fool’s Day article from Gardens Illustrated, with the “10 years in the making” updated to 12 years, and repeating references to the “top secret location in Wales” (one of these?) where the flowers were (not) being engineered.
impossible images showing their presence among other daffodils in gardens, where their blue colors contrast with the more traditional yellow daffodils; and, finally:
actual sellers on some of the world’s most well-known online shopping sites offering “blue daffodil seeds” (daffodil seeds dyed blue?) for sale that will allegedly produce blue daffodils similar to those in the fake photos accompanying the listings.
The last one is especially interesting to me because it demonstrates the commercialization of misinformation. We got there, apparently, from long-standing botanical curiosity around the idea of blue daffodils; to an April Fool’s prank; to the proliferation of the prank as a fact on AI-generated websites that didn’t get the joke; to Google’s AI assuring us that blue daffodils really do exist and it’s just a matter of a few years before they make it into our gardens; to random sellers offering “blue daffodil seeds” for sale from online shops.
Continuing further down the rabbit hole, I decided to ask three other AI tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and ClaudeAI — about blue daffodils too. ClaudeAI — the one I use the most — recognized blue daffodils as part of a joke right off the bat, as did Perplexity and ChatGPT. ChatGPT even had a little more fun with the joke, offering to create a photo of imaginary blue daffodils for me, so I’d have one on hand if blue daffodils someday came to be:
Of the four AIs I queried, then, only Google — the most ubiquitous source of information on the internet — seems to have been fooled. Because the idea of “dueling AIs” amuses me, I went further with ClaudeAI: I uploaded Google’s response and asked for an explanation of how this misinformation made its way around the web. Here’s what it told me:
This is such a fascinating digital folklore situation you’ve uncovered! I love that both Google’s search AI and Gemini confidently presented the April Fool’s joke as fact, complete with the future commercial availability prediction.
What you’re witnessing is essentially the birth of a modern gardening myth, spreading through AI systems. The “Poisson d’Avril” blue daffodil has become a perfect case study in how misinformation can cascade through digital ecosystems:
– A reputable gardening magazine (Garden’s Illustrated) publishes an April Fool’s joke – Various websites and content farms pick it up as fact – Search engines and AI systems ingest this information without recognizing the context – The information gets repackaged and disseminated as factual content – Eventually, opportunists create commercial listings for impossible products
The irony of multiple AI systems missing the “April Fish” joke while confidently explaining the nonexistent genetics is particularly delicious. It demonstrates one of the current limitations of large language models — they can process vast amounts of text but often miss cultural context clues that would be obvious to humans familiar with traditions like April Fool’s Day.
For gardeners and plant enthusiasts, this serves as a good reminder to approach unusual plant claims with healthy skepticism, especially when they involve dramatic color breakthroughs that haven’t been widely celebrated in horticultural circles.
So there you have it! We’ve debugged a myth about the existence of blue daffodils. The only thing that would make this even more fun is if I ordered some of the seeds and they turned out to grow daffodils with blue petals after all!
