Two of the many daffodils bred by the de Graaffs in the Netherlands: the dwarf and early ‘February Silver’ (Trumpet, pre-1949) 1 and ‘Garden Princess’ (Large-cupped, pre-1952) 2.
Breeding in the United States began to develop in the interwar years, but many varieties were never registered, or bulbs were distributed privately, and very little from this period remains. One breeder who started work at this time was more businesslike: Grant E. Mitsch (1907–1989) in Oregon was the first to give his seedlings proper publicity and distribution. He produced a catalogue showing the parentage of his varieties and set up educational exhibits at shows.
Mitsch started breeding in the early 1930s, building up to an annual output of around one hundred crosses. There was a high public awareness of the potential of plant breeding at this time, thanks to the work of Luther Burbank (1849–1936), whose California nursery had produced a vast number of hybrids in a wide range of ornamental and crop plants, amidst considerable publicity. Mitsch’s daughter, Elise Havens, a breeder herself, recalls her father’s pioneering spirit. “He did have quite a number of Luther Burbank publications and often mentioned his admiration for his ability to look at a group of seedlings and to ascertain immediately which ones would likely be successful.” Altogether Mitsch registered around seven hundred varieties; Elise recalls her father’s process:
[He would make] crosses involving perhaps twenty flowers, to give enough quantity to see a reasonable picture of the capability of a cultivar as a parent. He once repeated a successful cross using hundreds of flowers and came to the conclusion that was not a very practical route to success—it seemed wiser to use great care in the selection of parents to be used in one’s breeding programme. He did a lot of work in the upper divisions [i.e., divisions 5 to 9], which were not nearly as popular then as they are now[,] emphasized deep colour, and attempted to produce true red cup colour from the pink end, instead of orange.
The first known daffodil show in the United States was run by the Maryland Daffodil Society in 1924, with the Garden Club of Virginia setting up shows ten years later. This latter group had already played a major role in promoting the flower; the club’s president, Leslie H. Gray, set up a system of daffodil test gardens in different parts of the state in 1930. Fifty varieties were chosen to represent the system of classification and to illustrate to members and the public the range and performance of daffodils. Local clubs which belonged to or were affiliated with the garden club were encouraged to set up daffodil committees and carry out their own testing programmes. Led by the Virginians, interest in daffodils grew, and in 1955 the American Daffodil Society was formed.
A selection of Grant Mitsch’s prodigious output of daffodils: ‘Small Talk’ (Trumpet, 1965) 1, ‘Precocious’ AGM (Large-cupped, 1976) 2, ‘Plover’ (Large-cupped, 1975) 3, ‘Lemon Brook’ (Large-cupped, 1991) 4, and ‘Butterscotch’ (Large-cupped, 1962) 5. His work among the upper divisions produced many good Cyclamineus, appreciated by gardeners worldwide for reliable early colour: ‘Surfside’ AGM (1972) 6, ‘Itzim’ AGM (1982) 7, ‘Lemon Silk’ (1987) 8, and ‘Frostkist’ (1968) 9. ‘Oryx’ AGM (1979) 10 is a Jonquil, while like many breeders he produced a modest number of Split-coronas, such as ‘Trigonometry’ AGM (1995) 11.
Establishing order
THE WORLD OF DAFFODIL GROWERS
IN THE INTRODUCTION I referred to the daffodil as a cult plant. One of the distinguishing marks of a cult plant is a structure: societies, shows, competitions, rules for judging plant quality and performance, and an agreed system for classifying and naming plant varieties. Such an “organisational infrastructure” is well established for daffodils, although we can be certain that ninety-nine percent of the people who grow daffodils in their gardens are unaware of it.
Central to the daffodil world is the registration of variety names. In the past, varieties would be regularly renamed when they crossed borders or another nurseryman started growing them. Registration fixes a name and the claim of a particular individual (or more rarely, a company) to have originated it. The Royal Horticultural Society started its register in 1884, with a paid post of registrar being officially created in 1923. The current registrar is Sharon McDonald, who came to the job after working at the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. “Registration,” she says, “is based on a description of the flower and other aspects of the plant provided by the breeder—parentage is not so important, in fact it is not always known.” Nor is registration like patenting; as Sharon explains, “It is not my job to pronounce something as being different or unique—it is up to the raiser of the daffodil to ensure uniqueness.” Patenting, in the form of application for Plant Breeders’ Rights, is rarely applied for (“only on about two to five plants a year, mostly from Dutch breeders,” she says). New registrations come in at around two to three hundred a year, mostly from the traditional anglophone breeding countries, or the Netherlands, but Sharon acknowledges a recent “surge” from Japan and some new arrivals, such as the Czech Republic and Latvia.
Of the twenty-seven thousand unique daffodil varieties registered, Sharon reckons that only about ten percent are available commercially. The register can be accessed from the RHS website, where basic information on the plant is provided.
Most countries with a reasonable number of growers have a daffodil society. The United Kingdom’s Daffodil Society was set up in 1898 as the Midland Daffodil Society, becoming national in 1963. In April 1998 the World Daffodil Council was established to co-ordinate the activities of societies in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. Societies publish newsletters, organise shows and local groups, and generally promote the plant.
Shows are a crucial part of the daffodil business, and indeed are absolutely central to the notion of a cult plant, as is the fact that the shows are competitive. They are an occasion for amateur growers to exhibit flowers which they have grown to perfection, and for breeders to introduce new varieties. Among amateurs there is often an overlap with other cult plants grown for competition, with daffodil exhibitors also showing summer flowers like sweet peas and dahlias, at least in Britain. In talking to judges it seems as if there was a time when rivalry used to be quite intense, but growers these days seem more prepared to share knowledge and a more generous spirit prevails.
The demographic description of those who grow and show has historically been that of older men from skilled working class backgrounds, although many of the breeders have tended to be highly educated or members of the gentry. Small shows happen in village halls or in facilities provided by nurseries or garden centres. National shows are grander events and have the added excitement of attracting new varieties from breeders. In Britain many shows happen as an adjunct to RHS flower shows, encouraging general gardeners to wander down the aisles of green hessian–lined staging to discover something of the world behind the flowers they will all have in their gardens but think little about outside flowering time.
The prizes for plants in daffodil shows are hardly enough to cover the cost of fuel needed to get to the event. Growers enter for recognition, and breeders in the hope of launching their creations. At a national level, achievement is recognized by a series of awards; in Britain the Ralph B. White Memorial Medal is, for example, awarded to the raiser of the best new daffodil cultivar exhibited at the RHS during the year, while the Peter Barr Memorial Cup is a kind of lifetime achievement award, presented each year by the RHS to someone who has made a significant contribution to daffodils.
The International Daffodil Register run by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society is an invaluable tool for researching the flowers. Basic data on varieties is available online; here is its paper version alongside some daffodils cut for identification at Brodie Castle.
Shows are an important part of the daffodil world. An exhibit illustrates the work of modern breeders at an RHS show 1. Competitive exhibits of daffodils are set out in various classes, where every flower has to be arranged to conform to certain stan
dards. Judging involves the intense deliberation of small groups of men (very few women as yet), assessing how good the flower is according to a variety of criteria, such as “poise” (its angle of presentation), whether the petals are flat, free of wrinkles, and of good substance, etc.; and awarding it points based on their assessment 2–6.
What the judges rate highly at shows is an important influence on what varieties are grown more widely by enthusiasts, which eventually influences what nurseries grow and the public buys. However, as so often happens in plant breeding history, “what the judges like, the public doesn’t necessarily like,” as contemporary breeder Harold Koopowitz points out, explaining that, for example, “judges tend to like flat and round, whereas the public like some negative space.” Kate Donald, another sceptic of the judging process, points out that show rules stress “smooth, overlapping perianth segments with no gaps—so not propeller- or star-like—a deep colour, and thick substance,” which makes showing old varieties or those with innovative features impossible.
The global daffodil community now has access to a unique resource, DaffSeek, which since 2006 has made available detailed information on daffodil varieties to anyone with a computer and Internet connection. While its approximately 23,000 entries do not include all the cultivars in the RHS Registry, it includes all modern ones, and information on some unregistered historic ones. DaffSeek’s value and success can be seen as being part of the global citizen knowledge bank of which Wikipedia and other volunteer-created and -supported databanks are part, although those in the know do point out that information entered is usually unmoderated and therefore not always accurate. Volunteers from all over the world contribute data and regularly participate in updating it. One volunteer, Lachlan Keown from New Zealand, contributed programmes for showing the pedigrees of featured varieties and for their descendants, a feature of the site which has made DaffSeek a vital tool for anyone interested in hybridising. With a few keystrokes it is possible to bring up all the varieties registered by a particular breeder, trace the development of a particular division over time, trace back the pedigree of a variety, analyse the varieties used for breeding in a particular year, and so forth and so on. A strong feature is the inclusion of photographs, including prints of historical varieties. Needless to say, it was a valuable research tool in the writing of this book. No other group of plants is as well served.
4
Cornwall
CENTRE OF THE DAFFODIL UNIVERSE
Cornwall may no longer be the centre of daffodil production either globally (the Netherlands produces more) or nationally within the United Kingdom (Lincolnshire’s acreage is larger), but in terms of history and culture, the flower plays a unique role here. The Dutch and Lincolnshire industries are just that, industries, with all the hard-headed commercialism that the word implies. Daffodils there feel like just another crop.
Lincolnshire is an area of eastern England geologically similar to the Netherlands—flat and fertile, and with a long history of Dutch influence. Forcing daffodils for flower is a big part of the business there, with bulbs being chilled and then forced in glasshouses, often being destroyed afterwards. This is the only way the county can keep ahead of Cornwall, as flowering times can be four weeks later. Milder winters have eroded this advantage however, causing problems for growers. Forcing—for sale either as pot plants or for cut flowers—was also the mainstay of the Dutch daffodil industry, from the early days.
The first commercial growing in Lincolnshire started in the 1880s, with enough growers by 1903 for them to form a Daffodil Society. At around this time one grower, A. M. Wilson, recalls buying a single bulb of ‘Lucifer’ (Large-cupped, pre-1890) from Barr for a guinea (i.e., £1 and 1 shilling), which he later had enough stock of to sell for £100. In writing a memoir of the period in the 1939 Daffodil Yearbook, he recalls this as “a poor thin-petalled, short-stemmed little thing.” ‘Lucifer’ is now a cherished heirloom variety.
At the end of a long peninsula fingering its way into the Atlantic is Cornwall, the most southwesterly part of England—though many Cornish people might object to its being referred to that way! The county has its own language, a Celtic tongue close to Welsh until it became extinct around 1914; local patriots are now reviving the language as an expression of the county’s heritage. Along with its unique history, Cornwall has an unusual climate—like parts of California, it can be difficult to tell whether it is summer or winter. Moderated by the sea and the westerly winds which blow off it, its weather tends to be mild, moist, and blustery at all times of year. Wherever you are, the wind is rarely far from you. A long and complex geological history has led to its having had an important mining industry for much of its human history, but poor soils for farming. During the nineteenth century, agriculture began to focus on plantings which made the most of the county’s climatic advantages, in particular the early mild springs, and minimised its geographically imposed disadvantages; these niche crops were early potatoes, cauliflowers—and daffodils.
The British daffodil crop is now around 4,000ha (10,000 acres), half the world’s production, with Cornwall being about forty percent of that. Nearly all this production is based in West Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, which have the most maritime climate. Commercial growing started in the late nineteenth century, with the revolution brought about by rail transport—flowers could be picked one day and be in London markets the next. Road transport could not compete until the 1950s. In 1885, Andrew Lawry was one of many farmers who started daffodil farming in the area with the balmiest climate, on the slopes opposite St. Michael’s Mount, at Varfell on the south coast. At 400ha (1,000 acres), Varfell Farm is now the world’s largest daffodil producer.
Daffodil production anywhere potentially involves two outputs: bulbs for commercial and amateur growers and flowers for the cut-flower industry; the balance between these two will vary from place to place, depending on the variety and on local conditions. Bulbs for the cut-flower trade usually stay only two or three years in the ground. After this, their production of offsets results in crowding and a drop-off in quality, so they need to be lifted, divided, and sorted, and then the best ones replanted. Those not planted may end up being sold to the wholesale bulb trade for planting in parks and gardens or to other growers who grow them on a few more years, again for lifting and resale.
In parts of Cornwall, anyone walking one of the many footpaths which crisscross the landscape is liable to suddenly come across a field of daffodils 1. Now no longer used for crops, steep terraced fields in favourable south-facing locations would once have been used for wheat, potatoes, and daffodils 2.
Lifting is usually done in June, the driest month (not that this means that much in Cornwall). Medium-sized bulbs are generally sold, with growers keeping the largest for cut-flower production, and the smallest to grow on. Most commercial varieties take two years to double the weight of the bulb clusters resulting from planting, so about half the stock is sold after lifting. Given the various disease problems the plants suffer from, most growers prefer to replant their own stock. Bulbs are usually given hot-water treatment against eelworm before replanting.
Crop rotation is vital for certain crops, owing to the build-up of pests and diseases in soil if the same species is grown for many years in the same place; for daffodils the problems can be considerable and long-lasting. As a result, growers ideally like to grow on “virgin land,” where daffodils have not been grown in living memory; consequently, many grow their crops on fields rented from other farmers.
Growers producing flowers for the cut-flower trade have always tried to get as long a season as possible, with four months, January to April, being generally possible. Consequently there has always been a tendency to grow a wide range of varieties to spread the season. Given that the production of flowers is always very dependent on weather—warm sun bringing them on early, a storm the next week breaking many stems—there are very high levels of contingency built in, so many more flowers are produced than can be pick
ed.
Traditional yellow Trumpet or Large-cupped varieties may still predominate in Cornwall’s bulb fields, but the range of varieties grown steadily increases and gets more adventurous every year to satisfy an increasingly sophisticated floristry market. Since the 1960s, daffodils have been picked in bud.
Picking is hard work, traditionally done by migrant workers, now mostly from eastern Europe, and often by young people who do it for a few years before settling down to other jobs.
The Daffodil Page 7