What’s Blooming {Daffodils}

 A short post on these quickly fading blooms!  It’s hard to believe it’s already May and the bulb plants are already making their exit.

Daffodils, or Narcissus,  are of the Amaryllis family and bloom from bulbs in the New England spring.  There are somewhere between 50 and 100 different variations of this trumpet-like bloom, including species variants and wild hybrids.

It’s is yet another spring flower with a name derived from Greek mythology.  As the story goes,  Narcissus became so obsessed with his own reflection as he kneeled and gazed into a pool of water that he fell into the water and drowned. Another variation of the tale depicts an entranced Narcissus trapped on the water’s edge by his reflection until he died of thirst and starvation. In both versions, the Narcissus plant first sprang from his post on the riverbed.  As a result, the flower is widely seen as a symbol of unrequited love.

All species of Daffodil have a central corona surrounded by a ring of six floral leaves which unite to form a tube at the forward edge of the ovary. The usually yellow flowers (though also found in white and shades of green)are divided as follows: The three outer segments are sepals, and the three inner segments are petals.  Growers have developed some Daffodils with double, triple, or ambiguously multiple rows and layers of segments, and several wild species also have known double variants.

They aren’t all pretty though!  All varieties of this cheery bloom contain the alkaloid poison lycorine, concentrated mostly in the bulb but also in the leaves.  The bulbs can sometimes be confused with small onions and can make you very ill.  So don’t eat them!

Daffodils also cause a bit of trouble for florists, but the season is so short that we don’t mind.  When cut they secrete a sap that can harm other flowers. If mixed with other blooms, the stems cannot be recut before arranging or else the sap will be released again and effect the rest of the piece.  The calcium oxalate in the sap can also cause "daffodil itch," a dermatitis issue.  I much prefer to use them in landscapes, rather than in arrangements!