From “The Song of the Happy Shepherd” by W. B. Yeats in Collected Poems:
I must be gone: there is a grave
Where daffodil and lily wave,
And I would please the hapless faun,
Buried under the sleepy ground,
With mirthful songs before the dawn.
His shouting days with mirth were crowned;
And still I dream he treads the lawn,
Walking ghostly in the dew,
Pierced by my glad singing through,
My songs of old earth’s dreamy youth….
From Flowers and Their Histories by Alice M. Coats:
“The numerous wild species of narcissus are mostly centred about the Mediterranean, the great majority being indigenous to the Iberian peninsula, which is regarded as the centre of distribution of the genus. They may be divided for convenience into half a dozen major and some minor sections: the Ajax group, of daffodils with long trumpets; the short-cupped Poeticus group; the bunch-flowered Tazettas; the Incomparabilis, intermediate between Ajax and Poeticus; the Poetaz, between Poeticus and Tazetta; the Jonquils, and the various small rock-garden species such as triandrus and bulbocodium. Double forms occur in all these groups (except, perhaps, the last) and are in many cases of great antiquity….
“Our own wild daffodil or Lent Lily belongs to the first group, and was once so plentiful near London, that in 1581 the market-women of Cheapside were reported to sell the flowers in the greatest abundance, and all the shops were bright with them.”
Hello!
This is the second of four posts featuring photos of daffodils from Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens, that I took in February. The first post in this series is The Daffodils are Here! (1 of 4).
I first thought that the unusual flowers in the last six images might be a tulip variety — but after some digging around on the internet, I concluded (hopefully accurately) that it was a daffodil known both as Derwydd daffodil or Thomas’ virescent daffodil. This uncommon variant is a form of double daffodil — a daffodil that produces multiple rows of overlapping and clustered flower petals — and often features green, rather than yellow, as a dominant color.
Thanks for taking a look!
