Defining Daffodils

The 'daffodowndilly', the ‘Flower of March’, the ‘trumpet flower’… the daffodil has gone by many names.

However, a frequent misconception is that there is a difference between daffodils and narcissi. Narcissus is simply its Latin or botanical name and daffodil is its common name.

Its Latin name has long linked the daffodil with the Greek myth of the youth Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and languished away by a pool of water. A Narcissus flower is said to have sprung from where he died. 

However, unlike the classic yellow daffodils in this illustration, the flower in the legend was probably the white and orange Narcissus tazetta, which is known to have grown in ancient Greece.

Another explanation behind the daffodil's Latin name is its association with the Greek word narco, which is the root of the word ‘narcotic’ or ‘becoming numb’. The daffodil is poisonous and this is one of a number of symptoms if it is eaten.

Nonetheless, the daffodil has been cultivated for thousands of years by some of the earliest civilizations, usually for medicinal and religious rather than ornamental purposes.

Wild Daffodils

Wild daffodils first grew in Spain and Portugal before spreading across Europe. Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils, were almost certainly one of the most pervasive of these wild species, the Narcissus pseudonarcissus. 

Sometimes called ‘Lent Lillies’, these familiar flowers grew all over Britain until the 19^th century. Since then wild populations have declined sharply due to agriculture, woodland clearances and the uprooting of bulbs for gardens.

Daffodils enter the garden

It is quite a surprise that the daffodil first became a popular garden plant in the Tudor and Elizabethan eras. Its natural appearance was far less suited to the geometrical patterns and symmetry of the formal garden styles of the time than other bulb plants like the tulip.

However, the daffodil found an important champion in the figure of John Parkinson – who became Apothecary to King James I. His Paradisus Terrestris was the first book in English concerned with the ornamental rather than medicinal uses of plants.

In his own book, Parkinson identified almost one hundred different varieties of daffodil then growing in England.

Between the late 1600s and early 1800s, many of these old varieties fell out of fashion and were lost forever. 

However, Parkinson’s work would later inspire some of the most important daffodil breeders of modern times.

The first daffodil hybrids

Daffodils are not a quick plant to hybridise as it can take several years to flower them from seed.

The new rage for plant breeding in the early 1800s initially had little room for the daffodil – the focus was on exotic (and expensive) plants like orchids from far-flung parts of the globe.

Daffodil breeding was a quieter revolution. It started in the 1830s, with a Church of England clergyman.

While Dean of Manchester, William Herbert (1778–1847) successfully cultivated several new daffodil hybrids and pioneered new ways of classifying them.

The Dean’s botanical breakthroughs were admired by Darwin and paved the way for the explosion of daffodil breeding later in the 19^th century.

The Daffodil King

Even after William Herbert, the daffodil continued to be seen as a wild flower that was out of place in the formal gardens that were fashionable in the Victorian era.

There were few British suppliers of daffodil bulbs and few gardeners wanting to buy them.

One of the first to change the tide of popular opinion against the daffodil, was the Scottish nurseryman, Peter Barr (1826 – 1909).

Inspired by the long-lost daffodil varieties that John Parkinson had identified 200 years earlier, Peter Barr built up his own daffodil collection.

He purchased new daffodil hybrids raised by British growers, saving many of them from destruction.

Barr's successful nursery business and slickly produced bulb catalogues did much to increase the public appetite for daffodils. They also vastly improved the system by which new daffodil hybrids were classified.

The first Daffodil Conference

In 1884, Peter Barr persuaded the RHS to hold its first Daffodil Conference – a visually spectacular event held in a large conservatory at the Society’s South Kensington Gardens. It included breathtaking displays from the likes of Gertrude Jekyll who filled the space with a sea of daffodils in waves of yellow, orange, white and gold

Perhaps most importantly, the Conference led to the establishment of the first RHS Daffodil Committee who would oversee a new official classification framework for daffodils.

From this point on, the RHS would name and register all new Narcissus hybrids.

The RHS Daffodil Committee included trailblazing daffodil breeders like Sarah Elizabeth Backhouse (1857–1921).

Already an established daffodil breeder herself, Sarah Elizabeth Dodgson had married into the prolific daffodil growing family, the Backhouses, who bred over 470 new Narcissi hybrids between them.

Sarah Backhouse pioneered the breeding of red-cupped daffodils and 2 years after her death, her husband named the first ever pink-cupped daffodil in her memory.

Daffodil artists

From early on, artists played an important role in the identification and classification of new daffodil hybrids.

Some of the beautifully accurate daffodil paintings in the RHS Lindley Collections have been used by the current RHS Bulb Committee (the successor to the RHS Daffodil and Tulip Committee) to identify the characteristics of lost daffodil varieties and to add them to the RHS Daffodil Register.

This graceful daffodil portrait is by an unnamed chinaware painter who worked in the factories of the pottery manufacturer, William Copeland (1872–1953).

Copeland was a renowned daffodil breeder who commissioned a large collection of these portraits to capture daffodil varieties grown by himself and others at the turn of the 20^th century.

The artist is now lost to history but,in precisely capturing its characteristics, their work has allowed a daffodil that is now out of cultivation to be added to the RHS Daffodil Register.

This late 19th-century daffodil portrait by the talented botanical artist, Margaret Dickinson, is also a type specimen, capturing the qualities of the now lost Narcissus ‘Carnbie’.

However, this delicate painting is also a reminder of the environmental impact of the daffodil craze at the end of the 19th century.

Dickinson records that the daffodil was grown from a ‘root gathered in Spain by Mr Peter Barr in 1888.’ Later in his career, Barr collected and imported many wild daffodils from Spain and Portugal, which may have enriched daffodil cultivation but had a far less positive impact on native wild populations of daffodils.

Registering Daffodils today

The RHS has been the International Cultivar Registration Authority for Daffodils since 1955.

The Society maintains the International Daffodil Register listing 27,000 named cultivars. The register is searchable online.

New daffodil cultivars are registered by shape and colour. They are divided into 13 divisions according to characteristics such as corona (or 'trumpet') size and the length of the petals.

Beyond the world of the Narcissus specialist, the daffodil has never been more popular. It remains one of our favourite garden plants, appearing in over 80% of British gardens.