Daffodil is the official common name for any plant that falls under the genus Narcissus, including jonquils, paper whites, and others. But most people use the term “daffodil” to refer to the familiar trumpet-shaped springtime blooms.
The two words are synonyms. Narcissus is the Latin or botanical name for all daffodils.
If you know anyone who is celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary, give daffodils but if you mix them with other flowers in a vase, soak the Daffs in water for 24 hours to remove the sap as it is poisonous to other flowers. These poisonous crystals are effective in keeping squirrels away.
Daffodils are the flower for March and have a strong association with Lent. If you hear someone in England mention ‘Lent Lilies’, they’re talking about daffodils!
Gifting a bouquet of daffodils is believed to ensure happiness to the recipient… but legend has it that presenting only a single daffodil means bad luck may be on the horizon.
Propagating Daffodils
Daffodils multiply in two ways and are self-fertile, containing both male and female reproductive organs:
- Asexual cloning (bulb division) where exact copies of the flower will develop
- Sexually (from seed) where new, different flowers will result.
Under natural conditions, most daffodils are pollinated either by the wind or by insects. Daffodil hybridizers use a brush and transfer pollen from the anthers to the stigma. This pollen travels into the flower’s ovary, where it fertilizes the ovules, eventually forming seeds. After the flower itself dies, the ovary develops into a seedpod containing about two dozen seeds, which scatter late in the year. The resulting seed pod can contain up to 25 seeds. Each of these will produce an entirely new plant – but the wait for a bloom from a plant grown from seed is about 5 years!
To cross-pollinate daffodils, use tweezers to remove the stamen from the pollen-providing plant, hold it by the stem end and brush the pollen-covered anther across the stigma of the seed-producing plant.
You can also transfer the pollen from one parent to the other using a soft watercolor brush but if you will be pollinating multiple daffodils, dip the brush or tweezers in alcohol between plants to prevent contamination.
Once the seed-producing parent has been pollinated, cover the flower with a thin cloth to prevent other cross pollination. Mark it with a label containing the name of the parents and the date. Allow the plant to produce a seed pod, and then harvest the seeds once that pod is dry.
If you don’t intend to breed your daffodils, it’s best not to allow them to reproduce sexually. Like other plants that grow from bulbs, members of the Narcissus genus require time to develop a healthy bulb if they are to overwinter successfully and produce healthy flowers the following year. Snip off spent blooms immediately after they wither to prevent seed production and encourage a stronger plant.
Daffodil varieties
There are at least 200 different daffodil species, subspecies or varieties of species The Daffodil Data Bank accounts for over 25,000 registered cultivars (named hybrids), and apart from the regular yellow kind, there are others which come in a range of color combinations, like yellow and orange, yellow and white, white and red, orange and white, lime-green and pink colors.
The best place to see all these different types is at a flower show so look for one in your area usually run by the local horticultural society.
With so many varieties, it is no wonder that judges of a spring flower show really have their work cut out for them.
I once overheard two judges walking into a spring flower show saying that they hope there were not too many daffodils and then walk around a corner and gasp…oh s#%t! There were tons there lining most of the tables!
I used to grow just a few daffodils in my small garden in the Town of Milton and thought they were lovely. Now we have moved to three acres just outside of town that was previously owned by the Daffodil Queen of Milton and who planted more than 500 bulbs (Minimum as per her records kept) every fall for 22 years. We have been here now for three years and I have planted over 1,200 various bulbs including ‘Canada 150’ tulips, various other spring bulbs and of course more daffodils focusing on the other divisions that were not part of this collection yet.
The display in the spring truly takes your breath away and really is a great representation of this species.
In this garden, the bulbs have never been lifted and divided and the heads were popped off after blooms finished with all the energy going back into the bulb for next year’s bloom. You can almost hear the bulb division’s underground start. After the display ends the work begins in deadheading all of them but it is truly a labour of love!
I redid the large rockery and not only found great looking rocks that had long since been covered with soil over the years but I was also finding volleyball size bunches of bulbs…everywhere. When I carefully separated them, I would have now 50 bulbs to plant. Luckily there is about an acre of semi-dense deciduous forest on this property so I carefully planted some of them in the forest. In early spring, it is full of sunshine. They will grow in the shade of deciduous trees because they have finished flowering and the foliage has begun to mature by the time deciduous trees leaf out. However, it is better to grow them outside the drip line of deciduous trees rather than under them. Also, deciduous trees have tap roots and are preferable to shallow-rooted trees. Daffodils will not survive long under evergreen trees and shrubs.
I say plant them anywhere you have room and especially right next to a perennial whose leaves will hide the yellowing foliage and feed the bulb for next year’s blooms.
— Lianne Krane, Guelph-Wellington Master Gardener