Daffodils
– Day 2
‘Daffodowndilly’ by A.A.Milne, from ‘When We Were Very Young’,
1924
She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour;
“Winter is dead.”
We owe our beautiful, perennial daffodils to the Romans, who brought them to Britain from the Iberian Peninsula, mainly Portugal and Spain, which have the widest variety of daffodil species. The Romans planted narcissus to honour soldiers killed in battle and also to commemorate loved ones.
There are more than 27,000 cultivated varieties and most of them are in varying shades of yellow. However, the ‘Poeticus’ strains have white petals and there are some yellows that tend towards orange or salmon. It has been known for clumps of daffodils to survive in the ground for more than a century, faithfully blooming each year.
Growing a daffodil from seed can take five years. Until the 1800s, daffodils were wild species or natural crossbreeds.
In the 19th century breeders began to choose flowers for different characteristics and so the modern daffodil was born. A man who became known as ‘the daffodil maker’, the Reverend George Herbert Engleheart, registered 720 new daffodil hybrids between 1882 and 1923, though only about thirty are still available commercially. His particular work, for which he is best known, was with the ‘Poeticus’ varieties. He is often referred to as the father of the modern daffodil. In addition to his work with daffodils, he was a noted amateur archaeologist.
The UK is the world’s biggest grower of daffodils.
