DAFFY DAFFODILS
The glorious golden blooms that have long trumpeted the arrival of spring… and continue to make the spirits soar
THE snowdrop is a polite little excuse-me; the dainty crocus still more apologetic. It is the daffodil that is the great, confident herald of spring – a shriek of golden optimism, tolerant and hardy, forgiving the most incompetent gardener and staying in bobbing bloom for weeks on end.
It’s the national flower of Wales; the floral emblem of Gloucestershire. Since 1986 the bloom has been the badge of the Marie Curie charity (in succour of the terminally ill and their families) and, indeed, been adopted by similar bodies in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland.
They associate the flower with hope. In China, daffodils are linked with good luck, as they first blossom around the Chinese New Year – and, in Welsh folklore, daffodils are a symbol of faithfulness, reappearing like clockwork as winter fades.
In Anne Boleyn’s orchard at Hever Castle, in Kent, for instance, daffodils still make riotous annual show from bulbs planted 100 years ago. But this is a bloom, today, largely domesticated. Two hundred years ago, most daffodils were wild flowers, sweeping through woods and copses and up hill and down dale, like that ‘host of golden daffodils’ which so enchanted Wordsworth.
There are more than 13,000 varieties; and many more cultivars have gone extinct. But all are descended from the true wild species, narcissus pseudonarcissus, which is native to Europe and was probably brought to these islands by the Romans. They thought the sap had healing powers. In fact, it is an irritant and, as the bulbs and leaves contain the dangerous alkaloid lycorine, should never be eaten. In 2015, Public Health England beseeched supermarkets to display bulbs well away from the fruit and veg aisle – the previous year had seen 27 incidents of accidental poisoning.
Now wild daffodil populations have largely gone and we must grow them in our gardens. There is also, of course, considerable commercial cultivation, especially on the plains of Lincolnshire, and until quite recent decades the folk of the Tamar Valley in balmy Cornwall provided the rest of us with the first flowers of the season.
As late as 1957 there were still more than 3,000 people employed in the Tamar Valley trade, with some 10,000 arriving as seasonal labour when the picking began. But the industry as a whole had been badly dented by the war, when growers were forced to plough up their fields for the cultivation of food, and Tamar Valley production did not long survive the age of cheap labour and the advent of cut-price competition from the Netherlands.
But it is remarkably hard to finish off daffodils, and survivors of Tamar Valley’s past glory still sprout defiantly each spring in hedgerows and by ditches and wherever they were finally ploughed away. Since the Millennium, these have attracted close interest by experts, for whom they are a real historical resource: for so many are the only survivors of cultivars long lost.
Matching plants to old (and largely Victorian) records has been no easy task. Written detail is often sketchy and, of course, they had no colour photography. But Kate Donald was recruited by the National Trust to create a sort of daffodil retirement home in the gardens of the Cotehele estate, in Cornwall, and – as sometime international daffodil registrar for the
Royal Horticultural Society – really knows her narcissi.
Mrs Donald determinedly tracked down yellowing, dog-eared copies of vintage nursery catalogues, and had a signal break on discovering specimens growing at Threave, near Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire, – where not only had all manner of daffodils been planted since eighteen-oatcake, but scrupulous records had been maintained.
So Tamar Double White, Butter and Eggs, Victoria and Horace – among others – were joyously reclaimed from the wild. ‘The more I do this,’ mused Mrs Donald in 2003, ‘the more difficult it gets.
‘Many varieties are mixed up. Nurseries short of a variety for an order probably used to toss in a few bulbs of something similar, knowing that no one would probably notice…’
And, nearly two decades later, she and her husband Duncan are still at it – in the very different environment of Poolewe in Wester Ross. Croft 16 sells surplus bulbs of heritage daffodil varieties, largely online, and Kate and Duncan have been studying daffodils with quiet fanaticism for nearly 40 years. ‘We regard the National Plant Collection of pre-1930 daffodils as work in progress,’ pants their Croft 16 website, ‘and are always on the lookout for heirloom cultivars new to us – most particularly, named varieties, ideally from sources supported by some documentation, however sketchy…’ They class daffodils in no fewer than 17 divisions – trumpet, large-cupped, smallcupped, triandrus, cyclamineus and so on – and fret aloud on the frustrations of taxonomy, the tiny tragedies of their world. ‘Nutrient deficiencies can influence flower shape, too. For instance, a lack of boron can lead to unusually stumpy perianth segments with uneven margins and with a greenish cast.’ Puts you rather in mind of John Bercow. The Donalds agonise, too, over the use of trade names. ‘We feel this is preferable to coining a new cultivar name for an old daffodil, which might lead to greater confusion and a proliferation of synonyms: for instance, we’re pretty sure that the recently registered Barchard’s Hood is Rev Engleheart’s Beersheba, known since 1923.’ Tsk, tsk. But the names of the bulbs they sell put you in mind of an army’s streaming banners. In Division 9, for instance – that’s ‘poeticus’ daffodils of garden origin, with ‘a pure white perianth; very shallow corona, often with a red rim, and scented’. And for what you and I would call narcissi, we are offered Actaea, Horace, N. radiiflorus var. poetarum, Ornatus and Sarchedon. All daffodils sold by the Donalds were bred at least 75 years ago, some more than 140 years ago, ‘and a couple have been known for nigh on four centuries. Any daffodil which has survived that long is tough.’ Daffodils will prosper in a wide variety of soils and gardens. They hate standing in water, though, so the ground should be well drained, and the other common error is to cut (or even tie in a knot) their leaves after blooms have faded. This is precisely the time when the bulbs are gathering strength for next year’s endeavours – and the leaves should not be touched till they are wilted and yellow. But, with good planning and some study of varieties you may have a blaze of daffodils in your garden for months, even if none is ever quite as inspirational as those truly wild and free. ‘I never saw daffodils so beautiful,’ mused Dorothy Wordsworth. ‘They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness…’ But Shakespeare himself put it most succinctly – ‘Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty…’