DIVISION THIRTEEN—NATURAL SPECIES, VARIANTS, AND HYBRIDS covers all the wild species, their natural forms, and naturally occurring hybrids. This is primarily territory for enthusiasts, as many of the natural species are fussy in their cultivation requirements. There are some oddities, such as Narcissus cavanillesii with its minimal, almost microscopic cup, so making it look utterly unlike other daffodils, and the green, autumn-flowering N. viridiflorus.
Finally, MINIATURES are not a class on their own, as small-flowered or small-stature plants can be found among all divisions. Many wild species are small, and growers of alpines have always grown a certain amount of miniature daffodils. Recently, however, the general public has started to appreciate small-growing plants, partly because of the need for varieties to grow in confined urban spaces (there is a similar trend towards small vegetable varieties). Breeders are very much responding to this.
The pioneer breeder of miniatures was Alec Gray (1895–1986), whose ‘Tête-à-Tête’ was a stimulant for more breeding of small varieties. Wild species are the source of much of this new diversity, both rarities from the mountains of Spain and the familiar Narcissus pseudonarcissus. There are a few miniature Trumpets, and many more Bulbocodiums, Cyclamineus, Triandrus, and Jonquils, but very few Tazettas or Poeticus—the tall flower stem is very difficult to breed out.
Fragrance varies greatly between daffodil varieties, although there is a strong relationship with original species. Trumpets and some Large-cupped have a faint scent. Many Large-cupped and Small-cupped have little, while Triandrus and Cyclamineus varieties are totally scentless. Jonquils are famously fragrant, with a clear sweet scent. Tazettas are fabulously fragrant, but to the extent that they can be overpowering. Poeticus varieties are also often good, with a moderately strong sweet scent.
For those who find the complex craftsmanship of hybridisation all too much and prefer the simple, and often diminutive beauty of the original species, patience and attention to detail are required as many are demanding in the conditions they need to give of their best. Narcissus fernandesii var. cordubensis 1 and N. willkommii 2 are among many species found growing in the mountains of southern Spain and Portugal.
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From the Tombs of the Pharaohs
EARLY DAFFODIL HISTORY
White Tazetta daffodils are known from the tombs of ancient Egypt, and one of the greatest of the Pharaohs, Ramses II, was buried with daffodil bulbs placed on his eyes. Occasional mentions are to be found in classical texts, and the plants are known to have been grown by the Byzantines, whose Orthodox Christian empire dominated the eastern Mediterranean in the period following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476.
The Byzantines were succeeded ultimately by the Ottoman Empire, founded originally by Turkish-speaking nomads from central Asia who, after a few centuries of settling down, began to take gardening and flower culture very seriously. They are known primarily for their love of the tulip, and it was through them that Europe acquired its first bulbs of this flower, but they also cultivated several daffodil varieties, which were also traded into Christian Europe.
A remarkable book, published in 1613, gives us a good insight into the status of the daffodil as a garden ornamental at a time just before the almost exponential changes of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution altered the world forever. Hortus Eystettensis was commissioned by Prince-Bishop Johann Conrad von Gemmingen (1561–1612) of the southern German city of Eichstätt, as an illustration of the collection of plants which had been gathered together in the castle garden. What makes von Gemmingen’s garden and book special is that for the first time in western history, plants are being collected and celebrated not for their use, but for their own inherent interest. Forty daffodil varieties are illustrated, although the distinctions between them are not made at all clear. Narcissus pseudonarcissus, N. poeticus, N. minor, and N. bulbocodium are shown, several Jonquil and Tazetta types, two interspecies hybrids, and six doubles. The hybrids are N. ×incomparabilis—a hybrid between N. pseudonarcissus and N. poeticus, the two most common European species, and N. ×medioluteus—a hybrid of N. poeticus and N. tazetta. John Parkinson (1567–1650), an English herbalist and botanist of the same period, is said to have mentioned seventy-eight daffodil varieties, although it is even less clear than with Hortus Eystettensis what distinctions were made between them.
The numbers of varieties slowly and haphazardly increased over time. It is important for us looking back into history to understand that well into the nineteenth century, the concept of species crossing was an alien one. There was no idea that new varieties or species could arise through human intervention—this would have seemed the work of magic, and quite possibly of blasphemy. A few insightful early scientists, such as Linnaeus (1707–1778), and a small number of nurserymen had begun to carry out experiments with hybridisation, but with daffodils there was a drawback—the five years or so it took the plants to flower from seed. The gardener John Rea (d. 1681), who was reputed to have the largest collection of tulips in England, wrote instructions for raising daffodils from seed, but few followed his advice.
Three old daffodil varieties. ‘Sulphur Phoenix’ 1 is of unknown origin, eighteenth century at least; a robust plant capable of surviving many years in old gardens; also known as ‘Codlings and Cream’—codlings referring to small apples used for cooking. ‘Rip van Winkle’ 2 is an early-flowering double of obscure Irish origin, first recorded in 1884; double varieties like this would have been picked out by our gardening ancestors for their novelty value. ‘Sir Watkin’ 3 was raised, or selected, by W. Pickstone in England in the late nineteenth century.
Chance hybridisation by the bees (and the even smaller chance that seedlings which resulted from such crosses would survive five years of garden weeding) would be the only way that new varieties would occur. We have to imagine a gardener of the time looking around at their flowers in springtime and suddenly noticing, among the established clumps of the familiar, something new—a flower with a different shape, colour, or combination of parts. They would then have to ensure that the plant was cared for, that it built up a clump over time, and that it was then dug up and divided and the bulbs distributed. It might go to some other gardeners, and then be brought to the notice of one of the really small number of people with the leisure and interest to pursue such things—if this happened, then it might then be given a name and distributed further.
The names of early daffodils can cause immense confusion. We have to remember that there was no concept of the species as distinct to garden varieties or hybrids, and no understanding of the importance of having just one name, and making sure that plants distributed kept that name. Bulbs, so easy to store, and to trade over long distances, would lose names, and gain names, with remarkable rapidity.
A remarkable insight into daffodil origins has been made by Spanish researchers who analysed illustrations of daffodils in books published in Europe from the sixteenth century on—it was from this time that plants were depicted with a usable level of accuracy. They concluded that some Iberian species can be identified in illustrations of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, showing that these were in cultivation in central and northern European gardens at this time. However, certain other species also appear but lack later records; they concluded that these more southerly species were possibly less hardy and so died out. Indeed both Parkinson and Philip Miller (1691–1771), another important writer on gardens of the time, mentioned that imported Spanish bulbs often died out after a few years. On the basis of this study, we can be fairly certain that white daffodils had several different points of origin, having originated more than once in separate species. It also appears that doubles too originated separately on multiple occasions from different original species.
A clerical breakthrough
WILLIAM HERBERT
It is desirable to call the attention of the humblest cultivators, of every labourer indeed, or operative, who has a spot of garden, or a ledge at his wind
ow, to the infinite variety of Narcissi that may be thus raised, and most easily in pots at his window, if not exposed too much to sun and wind, offering him a source of harmless and interesting amusement, and perhaps a little profit and celebrity.
These were the words of William Herbert (1778–1847), writing in 1843. An Oxford-educated member of the gentry, he entered Parliament, and then the Church, finally becoming The Very Reverend Dean of Manchester in the Church of England. One of that famous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English type, “the hunting parson,” he was reportedly fond of outdoor life and sport, as well as being a poet and a keen amateur naturalist—as were so many of his clerical colleagues. He did some experimental breeding, mostly with florist’s flowers (e.g., auriculas and polyanthus) but also with some agricultural plants, notably swede (rutabaga) and other fodder crops. This was at a time when early scientists or gentlemen-experimenters like himself were first systematically making hybrids between plant species. Very often the hybrids turned out to be sterile, which confirmed the sneaking suspicion of many that God had created nature, and it was not the job of Man to meddle and try to improve on His creation. Herbert, however, discovered that some of his hybrids were fertile, which led him to challenge the concept of the species as being fixed and immutable. This led him to wonder whether the species was actually rather an arbitrary and artificial distinction.
These were radical thoughts for anyone in early nineteenth-century Europe, especially for a member of the established church. Herbert decided to carry out an experiment, and it was daffodils which he chose as his subject. He was interested in the family into which the daffodil had been classified, the Amaryllidaceae, and in writing the first study of the family he dissected the flowers of all 150 daffodil varieties then known in Britain, in order to develop a classification system. While working as a country vicar in Yorkshire, he began to suspect that some daffodil varieties were hybrids—partly because many were sterile. Moreover he thought the same about some he had found growing wild while travelling in France. Working very much as a scientist, setting up a hypothesis (that some naturally occurring daffodil species are hybrids), he sought to test it, by making crosses himself, to see if the new plants resembled either their parents or his suspected wild hybrids. His hunch turned out to be right, and some of the wild plants did appear to be natural hybrids. From this he concluded that it would be possible to deliberately make crosses between daffodils in order to generate new ornamental varieties. Hence the quotation at the head of this section; it was not unusual for Victorian garden writers to evangelize about the ease, pleasure, and possible profit of making new plant varieties.
Shortly before his death, Herbert published a paper on hybridisation which in many ways was very advanced for its time, suggesting (on the evidence of nearly forty years of experimentation) that hybridisation and speciation had considerably diversified the Almighty’s original creation of the Plant Kingdom. Not only this, but he also suggested a model of possible continual development, many years before Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. While his scientific ideas did not make a major impact, his 1837 book, Amaryllidaceae, helped to stimulate daffodil breeding, and almost certainly inspired the three pioneers of systematic selection and breeding: Edward Leeds, William Backhouse, and Peter Barr.
William Herbert was not only one of the fathers of modern plant breeding, but his example was useful in the battle to get hybridisation accepted in Victorian Britain. Much like genetic modification is seen by some today as “unnatural” and therefore dangerous or even immoral, there was a certain level of opposition to hybridisation during this period. The fact that William Herbert, a Dean of the Church of England, had not only carried it out, but recommended it to others, was made great use of by progressives within the horticultural community.
Another selection of historic daffodils. ‘Mary Copeland’ (Double, pre-1914) 1 and ‘Irene Copeland’ (Double, pre-1915) 2 were raised by William Copeland, who was responsible for about forty varieties in the early twentieth century. ‘Horsfieldii’ (pre-1845) 3 is a dwarf Trumpet, named for its breeder, John Horsfield. ‘Sweetness’ AGM (R. V. Favell, UK) 4, a sweetly-scented Jonquil of the 1930s, represents the growing interest at this time in less “conventional” varieties.
A mysterious pioneer
EDWARD LEEDS
EDWARD LEEDS (1802–1877) played a crucial role in early daffodil breeding but remains a somewhat elusive character, with little known about him. Daffodil growers who followed him were in no doubt as to the scale of his achievements; this can be seen from the fact that one of the early attempts at classifying daffodils had a section named after him—Leedsii.
Leeds came from a family of small-scale Manchester manufacturers; he became a stockbroker but was by no means a wealthy man. It is possible that he had a short-lived nursery business, but he appears to have been more of a gentleman-amateur. Some of his horticultural interests were very much in tune with the times—in particular the growing-on of seed of exotics from lands being newly explored. Herbert published his article on new daffodil varieties in 1843; and Leeds’s publication of pictures of some of his hybrids in 1851 (to accompany an article in The Gardeners’ Magazine of Botany) indicates that he was following the learned cleric’s advice. In his article, Leeds explained some of the basics of how he made daffodil crosses, including bringing later-flowering species inside the house to persuade them to flower at the same time as early-flowering ones, so he could cross-pollinate them. One particular Leeds achievement was his creation of a range of pale hybrids, using garden and wild hybrids involving Narcissus poeticus. Daffodils would no longer be dominated by rich yellow.
One of our few sources on Leeds’s life was William Brockbank, a Manchester surveyor and well-known local gardener, who never met him but was so fascinated by his reputation that he went to visit his old garden, to find out what he could and write about him. He described Leeds as having “rummaged Europe for Narcissi for his garden. Every nurseryman’s catalogue was looked over, and every variety obtained that he could hear of.” The old garden was “quite hidden from view from the road by huge overgrown Rhododendrons, Box and Laurels, 15 to 20 feet high. … the garden was ablaze with Daffodils—growing by thousands, almost wild.”
Failing health, and, it would appear, a lack of interest from the public in his daffodils, led Leeds to lose interest later in life. Brockbank recorded, “He was much annoyed, and reasonably so, at the want of appreciation on the part of the floricultural world for his seedling Daffodils …. [H]e had almost made up his mind to dig a hole and bury the bulbs out of sight.” This early, and probably very rich seam of genetic diversity was saved, however, as word had spread that Leeds was considering giving up; and in 1874 nurseryman Peter Barr organised a syndicate to buy Leeds’s collection of around twenty-four thousand bulbs for £100 (£7,240 at today’s prices).
For many years Leeds varieties were lost to commerce, but heirloom daffodil collectors and growers Kate and Duncan Donald have now rescued several and made them available once again. Among them the Large-cupped ‘Frank Miles’ (pre-1877), which their catalogue notes as “a fitting daffodil to be named after the tall and elegant artist, architect, keen plantsman and friend of Oscar Wilde,” its open star-like shape very typical of older varieties and quite unlike modern ones.
Botany in the genes
THE BACKHOUSE FAMILY
THE BACKHOUSES were almost a botanical dynasty. Their activities as amateur naturalists and plant breeders, and the later involvement of some of them in professional botany and crop improvement, was made possible by a successful family banking business, founded by Edward Backhouse (1781–1860) in Sunderland in the north of England. Like many enlightened business people of the period, the family were Quakers. William Backhouse (1779–1844), Edward’s brother, was a well-known naturalist from nearby Durham, and his son, also William (1807–1869), engaged in daffodil breeding, among many other country pursuits. Starting in 1856, this younger Backhouse worked on colour,
initially using Poeticus varieties and moving on to Narcissus pseudonarcissus; he is also credited with starting a group of hybrids that were developed much further by Peter Barr, who took over his collection of daffodils shortly before his death. We might wonder what his son, Robert Ormston Backhouse (1854–1940), came to think of this handover of the family silver, as Robert went on to become the most prolific daffodil breeder of the family.
The Backhouses were undoubtedly good breeders, but they were also good at marketing, which is often more important. Whereas Herbert and Leeds seedlings had unmemorable latinate names (e.g., Herbert’s ‘Spofforthiae Spurius’), the Backhouses were more likely to use names with selling power; two of their most successful were ‘Emperor’ and ‘Empress’ (both pre-1869 Trumpets derived from Narcissus bicolor × N. pseudonarcissus). They also promoted the idea of using daffodils in the house in pots to provide early season colour.
To be fair, and accurate, Robert Backhouse’s breeding work was shared with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth (1857–1921)—indeed in some ways she appeared to have been the driving force in their daffodil breeding. The couple lived in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, and lived the life of country gentry “of independent means”—i.e., they did not need to work but lived that very Victorian life which mixed country pursuits (hunting and archery) with amateur science: photography and plant and animal breeding (daffodils, lilies, and cats). Daffodils were the real passion however. Sarah first won an award from the RHS for ‘Moonbeam’, a pure white, in 1901 and was awarded the Peter Barr Memorial Cup for her hybridising work in 1916. She raised many highly praised varieties and was particularly focussed on those daffodils whose flowers had a white perianth and red corona.
The Daffodil Page 4