I’ve been to a fair few flower shows in my time, but only one bloom has bewitched me sufficiently to force me to cross the line from observer to participant. A rose? An orchid? A lily, perhaps?
No, my siren is the daffodil.
Daffodil varieties give the common flower uncommon colors and forms
This may seem an odd revelation to those who think the daffodil little more than a common yellow trumpet of roadside and field, but no bloom has transformed itself from ugly duckling to sleek swan quite as fully as this one, with the guiding hand of besotted breeders.
It is hard to say which variety, exactly, turned me into a daffodil junkie, but I could name a few suspects. There was the time I purchased Red Rim, derived from the poet’s daffodils that see out the season in their bone-white petals and red eyes. Red Rim boasts an orange-yellow cup, rimmed in a rich scarlet. The petals — fanciers call them perianth segments — are thick and white, and so broad that they overlap. It was bred by a clergyman in England in the 1920s, named the Rev. G.H. Engleheart. One imagines him quietly distracted during Easter services, the breeder’s busy season.
Next came Dove Wings, a dainty thing with a comically long trumpet and petals that are swept back. The perianth is white but the trumpet yellow, a dramatic color combination for a variety related to a daffodil tribe called triandrus. A breeder named C.F. Coleman brought the world Dove Wings in 1949, a time when the world needed all the doves it could get.
My narcissomania was secured with the purchase of Songket. This is a variety of large-cupped daffodil with broad, thick white petals and a ruffled cup that is a creamy pink at its rim. The lower cup, though, is white and then glows a minty green. The whole thing has a spicy fragrance. This confection was created by a breeding wizard named Brian Duncan, who lives in Northern Ireland.
The thing is, when you plant these jewels in the fall, the bulbs look little different from those of something as common as Ice Follies or Carlton. You grow them the same way: Bury them a few inches deep in garden soil in a sunny spot. The following March and April, up they come, ready to change your life. (Daffodils live forever, unless the bulbs sit in waterlogged soil during summer dormancy.)
“Most people are just floored by the variety, the color and form,” said Kathy Welsh, a daffodil grower in Oakton and, until last weekend, president of the American Daffodil Society. “I took a bunch into work, and people were just shocked” by the exhibition varieties.
The society held its annual show a week ago in Towson. The weekend before, members of the Washington Daffodil Society held theirs at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. (Joining a club is the best way to find sources of show daffodils.)
You will have divined by now that there is no one daffodil. Starting with the 50 wild species of narcissus, generations of breeders have created many thousands of named varieties, each different in some fashion. To bring order from this chaos, the daffodil world lumps the bulbs into 13 types, or divisions.
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