Daffodil
Daffodil
The remarkable story
of the world’s most
popular spring flower
Noel Kingsbury with
photographs by
Jo Whitworth
Timber Press London Portland
Frontispiece: ‘Bunting’ AGM. Photo by Jo Whitworth.
Copyright © 2013 by Noel Kingsbury and Jo Whitworth. All rights reserved.
Published in 2013 by Timber Press, Inc.
The Haseltine Building
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Printed in China
Book design by Patrick Barber
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kingsbury, Noel.
Daffodil: the remarkable story of the world’s most popular spring flower/Noel Kingsbury; with photographs by Jo Whitworth.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60469-318-8
1. Daffodils. 2. Daffodils—History. I. Whitworth, Jo. II. Title.
SB413.D12+
584′.34—dc23 2012037996
A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION: DAFFODILS AND THEIR PLACE IN OUR CULTURE
1. Daffodil Definitions
2. From the Tombs of the Pharaohs EARLY DAFFODIL HISTORY
3. Travelling, Changing, and Multiplying THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
4. Cornwall CENTRE OF THE DAFFODIL UNIVERSE
5. Breeders and Conservers DAFFODIL PEOPLE
6. Gone Native DAFFODIL COLONIES AND HOTSPOTS
7. Daffodils in the Garden
PLANT LISTS
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOURCES AND RESOURCES
PHOTO CREDITS
INDEX
Acknowledgements
THIS BOOK was photographer Jo Whitworth’s idea (she has a family connection with the Backhouses), but it grew naturally out of my interest in the history of plant breeding, and indeed in daffodils. So first of all I must thank Jo and Rob Whitworth for the idea and their commitment to this project.
I’m very grateful to Kate and Duncan Donald for their hospitality when I visited them at Croft 16 in the Scottish Highlands (and in driving me eighty miles to and from the nearest airport) and their help in answering my questions; to Joy Uings, for passing her dissertation on Edward Leeds on to me; to Charles Chesshire, for various insights into the Williams family of Cornwall; to Robert W. Scotland, for sending me a preliminary of his paper on the origin of the daffodil corona; to RHS Daffodil Registrar Sharon McDonald, for answering various questions; to Chris Braithwaite at Acorn Bank, Cumbria; to David Beuch at Cotehele; to John Lanyon, whose previous work at Cotehele was how Jo and I got started on this daffodil enterprise; and to Chris Bligh, who has done so much to promote the conservation of the feral daffodils of Gloucestershire’s Golden Triangle. Normally, when researching and writing a book like this, the RHS Lindley Library in London would be the first port of call; unfortunately a minor fire (but with much smoke) in August 2011 resulted in its closure for many months. I managed a short visit to the building site, thanks to Barbara Collecott, Liz Gilbert, and other staff. Daffseek.org has been an invaluable source of advice, so thank you to Nancy Tackett and Ben Blake, the website administrators.
I am grateful to the breeders featured in the book who answered my questions and supplied pictures illustrating their work: Ron Scamp, Elise and Richard Havens, Brent and Becky Heath, Bob Spotts, and Harold Koopowitz.
It has been good to work with Timber Press again, and Anna Mumford as commissioning editor should be congratulated on seeing the potential in the concept of this book; thanks also to all the other Timber staff who worked on it. Finally, my wife, Jo Eliot, has been her usual loving and supportive self during my work on the project.
JO WHITWORTH would like to thank the following people and locations for their generous help with the photography for this book: Kate and Duncan Donald at Croft 16 Daffodils, Wester Ross, Scotland; Brodie Castle, Forres, Scotland (National Trust for Scotland); Ron Scamp at Quality Daffodils, Cornwall; Jo Selman, Tamar Valley, Cornwall; New Generation Daffodils, Cornwall; Fentongollan Farm, Cornwall; Broadleigh Gardens, Somerset; Great Dixter, East Sussex; Sutton Court, Hereford; Farndale Nature Reserve, North Yorkshire; Sharon McDonald, RHS International Daffodil Registrar; Chris Bligh, Kempley, Gloucestershire; The Daffodil Society; Woodborough Nursery and Daffodil Pick-Your-Own, Pewsey, Wiltshire; RHS Gardens at Wisley and Rosemoor, and The National Trust. And a special thank you to Rob Whitworth for all his help and advice.
PRELIMINARY NOTES
Three acronyms are used:
RHS = Royal Horticultural Society (of the United Kingdom)
AGM = Award of Garden Merit (given by the RHS)
USDA = United States Department of Agriculture
Often when a daffodil variety is mentioned, its division is given (these are explained in the first chapter), its breeder named (if known), and the date provided for its first flowering (for older varieties) or when it was first registered with the RHS. This information is offered either in accompanying text or, if not, in parentheses after the name.
All months apply to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. Those in the Southern Hemisphere will need to convert months to their “opposites.”
Daffseek.org is the authority for names.
Calculations for converting historical prices to modern ones were made using this site: measuringworth.com/ukcompare.
INTRODUCTION
Daffodils and their place in our culture
Daffodils are somehow the quintessential spring flower. The appearance of their distinctive yellow blooms is a sure sign that winter has either ended or is about to soon. Unlike the tulip, which appears to be dependent on us for its continued re-emergence in the garden, daffodils reappear faithfully every year; and not just in the garden but in places such as roadsides, churchyards, and parks where they have been planted, often decades ago—in some cases over a century ago. These plants are clearly great survivors, thriving even in places where they have obviously been accidentally dropped or discarded—the flowers frequently mark where someone emptied the back of their car of garden waste into a ditch or hedge, little thinking that the event and scene of their crime would be annually and flamboyantly marked for so many years to come.
There are around twenty-seven thousand unique cultivars of daffodil. Unlike other flowers—roses, tulips, orchids, whose numbers of deliberately bred varieties range across great swathes of the spectrum or show off an extravagant range of shapes—daffodils are remarkably alike. All single cultivars have the same basic shape—a cup (also called a corona) and petals (although botanists do not call them petals); even the doubles or the strange “split-corona” varieties easily betray their basic inheritance. Above all there is the colour, more or less every shade of yellow which can be imagined, but very little else: white of course, but then almost every flower has at least one white variant, some flashes of orange, but never very much, and that’s it; there are so-called pink varieties, but they are more of a tan-apricot. One of the fascinating things about daffodils is just how much play we can have with the same basic design and the same colour scheme, about how much breeders, the bulb trade, and we—the customers—keep on coming back for more, as if we can never leave this most successful design alone.
At the heart of this book is the idea of the daffodil as a metaphor for our relationship with nature, as being a culti
vated plant, but one which is capable of also living its own life. Like cats, they feel only partly domesticated. The book is as much about the daffodil as cultural icon as it is about the daffodil as garden plant. Daffodils appear in paintings and in poetry, as emblems of spring and of nature. This cultural status is surely a large part of their appeal; we buy them as tight buds from florists as early as we can at the end of the winter not just because we know they will be pretty and yellow, but because Wordsworth and other poets wrote about them, and they appear endlessly reproduced as a sign of spring at every level of art from the museum-hung masterpiece to souvenir-shop kitsch. The daffodil cut-flower industry is a big one, and historically it was something of a pioneer in the craft and business of how to transfer the golden promise of spring several hundred miles, from the field to the vase on the table. The social history of this industry is part of this book too, as it has been an important driver in directing how daffodils have been bred and appreciated.
At the core of our relationship with the daffodil is how we have changed and moulded it. The key person here is the breeder. Breeders have historically been rather shy and retiring people, leaving little of historical record. Daffodil breeders have been rather the exception, in that their names tend to be better known. They are a colourful lot, and it is the intention here to make them central to the daffodil story.
Large colonies of daffodils are a common feature of gardens and parks throughout the temperate zone. Here at Great Dixter, in Sussex, the nineteenth-century variety ‘Princeps’ flourishes in a garden which may have been one of the first to grow daffodils on this scale, “naturalised” in grass 1, 2. In other gardens, such as Acorn Bank, Cumbria, daffodils have spread through the woods more through natural processes than active planting 3.
Why are daffodils special? I believe that there are three factors which make them so.
1) A BIOLOGICAL FACTOR. Daffodils are true perennials. Some of the plants sold as perennials (as herbaceous or bulbous) have, in truth, a limited lifespan. Among bulbs, tulips and lilies are a case in point. In ideal conditions, they may live for quite a few years, but they do not go on forever and, crucially, have a limited ability to form clumps. Daffodils are not only immensely long-lived but continually clone themselves to form ever-expanding clumps. They are the bulb equivalent of those robust border perennials like hardy geraniums or goldenrod, whose clumps just keep on getting bigger and bigger.
2) A HISTORICAL FACTOR. Daffodils are an imperial flower. Flourishing in the climate of Great Britain, the plants rode the coattails of the British Empire, but really only to those lands where people of British descent chose to settle, inevitably ones with a climate similar to back home. The reasons for this are endlessly debated by historians, but what became an anglophone or Anglo-American culture ended up dominating the world. The daffodil is part of that culture.
3) A SOCIAL AND CULTURAL FACTOR. The daffodil is a cult flower. All gardening cultures choose particular plants and try to “improve” them. It is, however, really only the British (and their cultural descendants) and the Japanese who have produced cult plants. Cult flowers attract enthusiasts, who collect, categorise, and name their chosen plant and, crucially, continually select and breed new ones. Shows and competitions are central to the cult plant. Cult plants appeal to people with an obsessive streak.
Historically, auriculas, polyanthus, ranunculus, tulips, and dianthus were important cult plants in northern Europe. It was originally the Dutch who grew them (and, in the case of tulips, became famously obsessed), but the Dutch commercial interest took over, and the amateur enthusiasm was left to the British. By the late nineteenth century, these “florist’s flowers,” as they were known, were being replaced by other cult plants: dahlias, sweet peas, chrysanthemums—and daffodils.
Many cult plant enthusiasts will grow only the objects of their obsession and never let a cabbage or a rose enter their gardens. Cult plants attract a wide range of people, but (until recently) nearly all were men, with a strong tendency for growers to be part of what could broadly be called the skilled working class. Some of the cult plant growers are true obsessives, and given to a clannish secretiveness; I am told this is particularly true of Japanese growers. In researching this book I found the daffodil fraternity immensely friendly and helpful, but there was the odd hint that secrets were held, and one well-known breeder pointblank refused to talk to me, saying “I’ve never heard of you in connection with daffodils.”
‘Ormeau’ 1 is one of many thousands of daffodil varieties which fit the popular idea of what a daffodil is; it was bred by W. J. Dunlop in Northern Ireland sometime before 1949. ‘Winifred van Graven’ (Van Graven Bros., Netherlands, pre-1954) 2, ‘Gem of Antrim’ (Tom Bloomer, Northern Ireland, 1964) 3, and ‘Spencer Tracy’ (J. W. A. Lefeber, Netherlands, pre-1943) 4 all look pretty similar to most of the gardening public, whereas daffodil connoisseurs will instantly spot many differences. Much real distinctiveness in daffodils comes through mutations, such as doubling, as in ‘Yellow Cheerfulness’ 5, first grown (pre-1937) by the Dutch company Eggink Bros. Split-coronas, such as ‘Menehay’ (Ron Scamp, UK, 1991) 6, are also a mutation, popular as a cut flower but not appreciated by many gardeners, who see them as deformed.
Glimmers from the past
NAMING A FLOWER
WHEN WE LOOK at the words used for daffodils we have to think ourselves out of our familiar world. We are very focussed on flowers—we grow flowers, we buy cut flowers, and flower imagery surrounds us. Our ancestors would not have enjoyed flowers in this way; for them, often hungry or suffering from ailments now easily cured, such uses would have seemed irrelevant, compared to what were far more important uses for plants: food, flavorings for food, and medicine.
The name “daffodil” and its variants (daffodily, daffadowndilly, afody, affodily) are thought to have been derived from the Latin asphodilus, a group of plants of largely Mediterranean origin, unrelated to daffodils and whose flowers bear no resemblance whatsoever to them, being similar only in having bulbs and strap-like leaves. Also classed as a daffodil was the snakehead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris); English herbalist John Gerard, whose Herball of 1597 is a major source of early plant knowledge and lore, referred to it as the “Checquered Daffodill.” We would see no resemblance now, and even their bulbs look totally dissimilar. Oddly, at least to us, the “wild daffodil” of Britain, the one we now know as Narcissus pseudonarcissus, was dubbed the “bastard” daffodil, i.e., a false daffodil, not the real thing. That it did not even have its own name must indicate that it was a comparatively rare plant, and one which had little use.
“Daffodil” in most English usages is used to refer to the classic florist and garden daffodil pattern: single flowers with a big trumpet-like cup, usually yellow. Anything else tends to get called “narcissus.” There is no rationale behind this, and it makes life simpler if all members of the botanical genus Narcissus get called the same—daffodil. “Narcissus” is derived from the Greek narco (“becoming numb”), the same root as the word “narcotic.” Here then is a hint of one of the few uses to which daffodils were put in traditional herbal medicine. Gerard refers to the classical Greek writer Sophocles calling them “the garland of the great infernall goddes, bicause they that are diparted and dulled with death, should woorthily be crowned with a dulling flower.” The Furies, vengeful spirits of the underworld in Greek mythology, wore daffodils in their tangled hair and used them to stupefy their victims.
The word “narcissus” is linked inexorably with that of the beautiful boy Narcissus in Greek mythology, who was unaware of the intense love for him felt by the wood nymph Echo, who was cursed by being only able to repeat his last words. Eventually she pined away for him to such an extent that she became only a faint voice in the woods. As a revenge and punishment on Narcissus, Venus, the god of love, sent Cupid to cast a spell over him, so that he would fall in love with the first face he saw. What happened, of course, is that he leaned over a pool to drink and fell in love wit
h his own image. Like Echo, he began to waste away with unrequited love, but the gods took pity on him, and turned him into a flower—a daffodil, probably Narcissus tazetta, which we know to have been grown in ancient Greece. Not surprisingly, daffodils came to symbolize both unrequited love and egotism in the Victorian language of flowers, and narcissism has come to mean a pathological sense of preening self-worth.
A more sinister legend, one probably linked to a folk understanding of rape, abduction, and bride-kidnapping, is that of Persephone and Pluto. Persephone was a beautiful young woman who stopped one day to pick a daffodil and was kidnapped by Pluto, god of the underworld. However, a deal was struck and she was allowed back to the surface every year—her mother Ceres (goddess of agriculture) making the daffodil and other plants flower in spring at the time her incarceration would end.
Daffodils have been a symbol of spring and rebirth in many cultures, not just because that is when they flower, but because of their persistence in coming back every year. In 1, daffodils grown in fields for cut flowers in the Tamar Valley in Cornwall have survived long after cultivation was abandoned. In parts of Britain daffodils appear to be wild but have almost certainly spread from cultivation centuries ago 2, blending in with native wildflowers, such as wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) 3. Cultivated daffodils are descended from several different species; in the Tamar Valley, varieties clearly descended from the white Mediterranean Narcissus poeticus have established themselves in hedge banks after being discarded from cultivation 4, 5.
Beauty and the beast
GOOD AND ILL WITH DAFFODIL CHEMISTRY
THE ASSOCIATION of the daffodil with a narcotic state indicates one possible use for daffodils in distant times gone by. A narcotic state and convulsions are among the symptoms of daffodil poisoning, along with nausea and severe abdominal pain, so it is not surprising, perhaps, that there is comparatively little record of the use of daffodils in traditional herbal medicine. The Romans are known to have used the plant as a poultice for wounds, although the sap contains an irritant, calcium oxalate, so one doubts if it did much good! Galen, the second-century Greek medical writer, is quoted by Gerard as saying that “the roots of Narcissus have such wonderful qualities of drying [presumably he means its astringency] that they consound and glew together very great wounds, yea and such gashes or cuts as happen about the veins, sinues, and tendons.” Maud Grieve’s encyclopedic A Modern Herbal (1931) gives the plant little space, mentioning only occasional use for treating dysentery and bronchial catarrh.
The Daffodil Page 1