Episode 5: Daffodil
On this month’s episode of Flowers & Folklore Sarah tells you all about the daffodil.
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Flowers and Folklore. I'm Sarah, a florist living in Glasgow in the UK. I run a business called Rook Botanics, which I started in 2020. I create flowers for funerals, weddings, I run lots of workshops, and I now host this podcast. I also write a newsletter called The Foibles of a Florist.
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You can find a link for it in the show notes. If you love flowers and folklore and odd floral facts, then you are in the right place. A quick note before we get started. I love reading and learning about flowers and the history and tales associated with them. There's so many different regional stories and so much lore,
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so what you may have heard or read may be different to what I talk about in the podcast. You're absolutely welcome to get in touch and let me know what you've heard. I'm always keen to learn more. If you stick around till the end of the show,
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then I'll share the best ways for you to get in touch. On with the show.
Hello and welcome to the fifth episode of Flowers and Folklore. I'm so pleased you're here. In today's episode, I'm going to be giving you a deep dive into daffodils.
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For most people, daffodils are the start of spring. They're just so cheerful and lovely. Their bright yellow trumpets are so bold and fun. I love filling old milk bottles with water and just dotting daffodils all around the house. They're often an inexpensive flower and you can usually pick up a bunch from your
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local supermarket or florist for a couple of pounds. I've just finished placing an order with my wholesaler for some flowers next week and I ordered a couple of different types of daffodils. I got just like some standard daffs and then some narcissus. I got some white avalanche and yellow royal connection as well.
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So I'm very excited for them to arrive. As always, I'm going to start with five quick facts about the daffodil. Number one, the UK grows more daffodils commercially than any other country. Number two, the daffodil is the national flower of Wales. Number three, daffodils contain sap that's often poisonous to other plants. Number four,
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a substance extracted from daffodil bulbs, galantamine, is used as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, similar to snowdrops. Number five, they're the official 10th wedding anniversary flower. The daffodil's genus is Narcissus, and they are part of the Amaryllis family. We're going to be talking about daffodils and narcissists throughout this episode.
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Despite their happy sunshine faces, they are actually a toxic plant. And there's something called the daffodil itch. It's a term used by florists and other people who handle daffodils. And it's basically when the sap from the daffodil gets on your skin, it can be a bit itchy. I've never had it happen to me, but to be honest,
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it's only recently that I've started using them in my work. They've always given me a bit of fear just because when you cut the stem, sap comes out of it. And so if you want to use daffodils in arrangements with other flowers, you have to cut them,
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put them in water for several hours until the sap stops coming out of the stem. And then you can mix them in with other flowers. When I worked in flower shops, I didn't like to mix daffodils in with other flowers because once they've been taken home by the customer,
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I wouldn't know if they were going to cut them again and then let the sap come out the stem and then it can shorten the life of all their other flowers. Before researching this episode, I assumed that daffodils were native to the UK and that might not be the case.
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Some people speculate that the Romans brought them over. According to the RHS website, Narcissus pseudo-narcissus is perhaps native to the UK, but primarily daffodils come from Spain, Portugal and Morocco. So most of the daffodils that you're seeing around, particularly the bright yellow ones, are probably garden varieties. According to the Wildlife Trust website,
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if you would like to see a wild daffodil, they recommend heading to a woodland or damp meadow in north or southwest England or Wales. The name daffodil is derived from aphodel, which is a variant of asphodel, which is a very pretty plant. I'd recommend checking it out.
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It isn't known when the D was added to the start of daffodil. The Daffodil has some very silly names, which I absolutely love. There is Daffodown Dilly, Daffy Down Dilly, Peter's Leeks, Goose Flops, Butter and Eggs, Lenti Cups. In her various letters to friends, Beatrix Potter referred to them as Daffys, which I absolutely love.
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And then in her story, The Fairy Caravan, they're referred to as Butter and Eggs. For the etymology of Narcissus, It's linked with the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, which we're going to chat about later. In the Victorian language of flowers, daffodils represent regard and chivalry, whereas Narcissus represent egotism, and then double Narcissus represents female ambition,
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which I would now interpret as a very positive thing in the context of the Victorian period. I'm not sure it was meant as a compliment. Over the years, the daffodil has inspired some truly great literature, poetry and artwork. A. A. Milne wrote a gorgeous poem about the daffodon dilly in his book of verse for
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children when we were very young. She wore her yellow sun bonnet, she wore her greenest gown, she turned to the south wind and curtsied up and down. I think Milne perfectly captured the daffodil on the page. I think I would be remiss to not mention the poem by Wordsworth.
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I think everyone knows that very first line, I wandered lonely as a cloud. It is perhaps one of the most famous poems in the English language. The line, a host of golden daffodils, was inspired by a walk with his sister, Dorothy, in early April 1802. This walk took place in the Lake District, on the shore of Allswater.
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I did a little bit of digging, and according to a blog post by the RHS, the daffodils that Wordsworth is referring to were probably Narcissus Pseudo-Narcissus. They have quite a soft lemon appearance to them, rather than the very bold yellow daffodils that you usually see.
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Both the daffodil and the Narcissus received a spot in the Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker, The daffodil was included in The Flower Fairies of the Spring, which was Barker's first instalment of The Flower Fairies. In the poem for The Daffodil Fairy, Barker opens it with, I'm everyone's darling.
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And I think this is just so appropriate because everyone loves a daffodil. The fairy that she illustrated to go alongside the daffodil is wearing the trumpet of a daffodil as a little hat, which is just gorgeous. And she's wearing a yellow dress and the skirt is shaped like a daffodil.
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The Narcissus Fairy came almost 20 years after the daffodil fairy and it was included in The Flower Fairies of the Garden. The illustration to go alongside it is just so whimsical and it really captures the breeziness of a narcissist. The poem ends with, so does narcissus bring, tidings most glad and plain, winter's gone, here is spring,
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Easter again. And it's not just poets and authors who are absolutely captivated by the daffodil, but Morisot, Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Claude Monet are just a handful of famous artists who have painted daffodils. As I'm sure many of you will know, the daffodil is the national flower of Wales.
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I couldn't find one accepted single answer as to why the daffodil became one of the symbols of Wales or its national flower. There's one theory that it's because St David's Day, which is celebrated on the 1st of March, is around the same time as daffodils bloom, so they just kind of coincided.
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St David is the patron saint of Wales, people will often wear a daffodil or a leek on St David's Day. I'm not going to be able to pronounce this correctly, but the Welsh name for daffodil is Keninpedra, which is a literal translation to Peter's leek.
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The leek is an older Welsh symbol, and the stems of daffodils do kind of resemble a leek. And I went down a bit of a rabbit hole to find out who Peter was. There's one theory that daffodils begin to open around the time of the feast of the chair of St Peter,
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which is on the 22nd of February. This is a celebration within the Catholic Church that dates back more than 1600 years. The feast honours the authority of Saint Peter, the first Pope, and the unbroken line of his successors. For those of you who listened to the Thistle episode of Flowers and Folklore,
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you'll remember me talking about the wedding dress of the Princess of Wales and how in the lace there was flowers depicting England, which was obviously a rose. thistle for scotland and then a daffodil for whales and then the shamrock for northern ireland and i can see why they picked a daffodil and not a leek i'm a big
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fan of leeks but obviously daffodils are very beautiful at the start of this episode i talked about how many daffodils are grown for commercial purposes in the uk and now we've obviously talked about wordsworth who was in the lake district and how daffodils are a symbol for whales
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actually the majority of British daffodils are now grown and farmed in the far southwest and along the east coast. It's now time for the tragic tale of Echo and Narcissus. In Greek mythology, Echo was a mountain nymph. Narcissus was the son of the river god Cephasus and the nymph Liriope.
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The story goes that Narcissus was an absolute babe. He was incredibly beautiful and everyone who saw him just fell in love with him. Men, women, everyone was obsessed with Narcissus, but he rejected all of the advances. There was one admirer Echo, who was absolutely head over heels for him.
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When Narcissus rejected her, she completely wasted away until only her voice remained. And so Echo whiled her days away, repeating any sounds made in the mountains and the valleys. The goddess Nemesis took pity on Echo. She convinced Narcissus to gaze into a pool of water. When Narcissus saw his reflection, He fell completely in love with himself.
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But he was unable to embrace his reflection. He was unable to touch the person in the water. And just like Echo suffered, he too wasted away. And in the place where his body once lay, a flower grew. And that was the Narcissus. It's one of the most enduring tales from Greek mythology.
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It's a warning of the dangers of excessive self-love and obsession. Daffodils also have another association in Greek mythology. There's a legend that relates to Persephone. While she was wreathed in white daffodils, She was captured by Pluto. His touch turned the flowers from white to yellow. And ever since then, daffodils have been planted on graves.
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It was said that daffodils grew on the banks of the Acheron. The Acheron River featured heavily in Greek mythology, as it was depicted as the entrance to the underworld. The Acheron was sometimes known as the River of Woe, and the daffodils growing along the banks brought beauty and joy to the spirits of the dead.
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The daffodils would have been referred to as Aspidels, later becoming daffodils. The daffodil has become really iconic for the Marie Curie Cancer Charity. In March 1986, they began selling fresh daffodils in a way to raise money for nurses who provide care. It was so popular that year that it became an annual event.
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The Great Daffodil Appeal is now an annual fundraising campaign and it's Marie Curie's biggest fundraiser. The fundraiser coincides with the natural blooming season and so it runs from March 1st to March 31st. They're no longer selling fresh daffodils to raise money. Instead, for a small donation, you can purchase a daffodil pin to wear during March. In 1990,
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a year before I was born, the Liverpool Marie Curie Society, alongside Liverpool City Council, planted one million daffodil bulbs in Sefton Park. This was to create a field of hope, and it continues to bloom every year. It was such a success that other parks in the city have also followed suit.
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It was in 1995 that Marie Curie switched from selling fresh daffodils to the daffodil pins instead. It makes total sense that they picked the daffodil to represent this campaign as they are often seen as a symbol of hope. In my research for this episode, I came across many references to the daffodils as being a symbol of hope.
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In Fiona Stafford's book, The Brief Life of Flowers, she wrote, It's also said to bring good fortune if you're the first person in your location to to spot the first daffodil of spring. I also read about a tradition that if you make the deliberate effort not to step on them and crush them,
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then you'll be favoured with abundance. Which I think is just common sense, like why would you go out of your way to stand on a daffodil? But I would love to know who started this tradition, because it just sounds like a gardener who's really annoyed that people keep standing on his daffodils.
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It's also meant to bring good fortune to if you gift someone a bunch of daffodils. However, if you gift them a single stem, this will have the opposite effect. There were plenty of references to ill luck and death associated with daffodils and narcissus. In Margaret Baker's book, Discovering the Folklore of Plants,
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she wrote that drooping heads linked daffodils with ill luck and death. If the first daffodils of the year hung their heads towards the observer... he should expect nothing but disaster. I also read lots of references to chicken farmers and poultry farmers. They were particularly superstitious around daffodils and narcissists and wouldn't
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allow them to be brought into their homes as they believed they were unlucky and would stop their hens from laying eggs or stop eggs from hatching. Daffodils are also known as the Lent Lily, and there is quite a close association between daffodils and Christianity. There's one legend that said on the night of the Last Supper,
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the daffodil appeared in the Garden of Gethsemane to comfort Jesus. who were saddened by the betrayal of Judas. In Christian symbolism, daffodils are often associated with resurrection. And I think that makes sense as to why they're now so heavily associated with hope. But the flowering season of daffodils obviously fits in with the timing of the
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festival of Easter. The German word for daffodil literally translates to Easter bell. I also wanted to share with you the legend of the Chinese lily. which is actually about narcissus and not a lily. The legend goes as follows. An old man leaves his land to his two sons. The eldest son takes his pick of the land.
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He chooses to tillable, fertile land and the younger brother is left with an area that's watery and rocky. But as luck would have it, a fairy gifts the younger son three daffodil bulbs. He plants them on his land and the flowers are beautiful. He ends up making a fortune selling the bulbs.
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The elder brother isn't happy about this, and so he buys up all the bulbs and he plants them on his own land. But he doesn't have success. The daffodils he plants all die because they do not have enough water. The legend is a lesson about the nature of greed,
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but also about the importance of planting your plants in the right place. It's also tradition that if a daffodil blooms in time for Chinese New Year, it will bring you luck and good fortune. Before ending this episode, I really want to tell you about Sarah Backhouse. Before researching this episode, I had never heard about her,
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but I came across a blog post on the RHS website and just had to tell you all about it. Sarah was born in 1857 and she became known as the person who created the first true pink daffodil. The official name for this daffodil is Narcissus Mrs. R.O. Backhouse.
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It's the most well-known and widely grown pink daffodil of the last 90 years. I was really excited when I looked it up, and I'm just going to set expectations. It's very orange. It's an orangey pink. The RHS refers to it as salmon, but it is an absolutely stunning daffodil.
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It didn't actually get its name until 1923, which was two years after Sarah died. It was named by her husband. And I know this was just convention at the time, but I really wish it had been called Narcissus Sarah Backhouse rather than Mrs R.O. Backhouse.
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But maybe I'm just biased because obviously I think the name Sarah is the best name in the world. Sarah led a really incredible life. At age just 33, she was already raising new varieties of Narcissus. Snowdrops, hyacinths, cyclamen and other plants. And there's quite a lot of mystery surrounding her.
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In the article that I read about her, she was described as quite elusive. And in the Garden Magazine in 1921, Joseph Jacob said this of her. It was not very often that she staged many flowers in public, but when she did, it was something like a revolution.
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And despite not being in public often, she was making a lot of money. Letters and papers show that Sarah's daffodils were in great demand. And there was a letter for an order of a thousand bulbs of sunrise, which was a variety of daffodil. If you're interested in daffodil cultivars, I'd really recommend checking out Sarah's achievements.
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There was a record in her garden diary in 1906 where she talked about the hybridisation of pink daffodils. I'm not going to dive into hybridising, because it's really not my forte. But it was very much Sarah's, and she worked with pink and red colouring for decades.
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And testament to her success, her daffodil is still available today, 100 years after production. In 1908, someone purchased three seedlings from Sarah, that costs the equivalent of nearly £19,000 in today's money. For her work in daffodils, she received the Peter Barr Memorial Cup. And so I'd just like to take you on a little tangent about Peter Barr,
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as he was born in Govan, which isn't too far from where I live. He started in a seed shop in Glasgow and became a prominent nurseryman and merchant known for his daffodils. And apparently, before his work in daffodils, British gardeners often overlooked daffodils and Peter Barr helped inspire interest in them. Following the death of Peter Barr,
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the trustees of the Peter Barr Memorial Fund set up an annual award. And the definition for the award is someone who has done good work of some kind in connection with daffodils. And so obviously this has been awarded to Sarah in 1916. I looked up the list of everyone who has received this award and Sarah's win in
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1916 was originally recorded under her husband's name but it was definitely Sarah who won the cup. In the year of 1918 the cup was awarded to Ellen Ann Wilmot who is an English horticulturalist and she has a very interesting history and did a lot for horticulture.
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And that brings us to the end, into our deep dive about daffodils. As I'm recording this, there's daffodils already in bloom, and they are definitely a much needed pick-me-up after the spell of winter. For a list of the sources that I used for this episode, please head over to my Substack. There's a link in the show notes.
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Substack allows you to leave comments on each episode as well. So if you have any thoughts or feedback, please let me know. Unless you've only got horrible things to say, then, you know, you can just scroll past. It would be really great if you could share this episode with a friend,
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subscribe to the show or leave me a five star review. Alternatively, you can do none of those things and that's totally fine. I'm just so pleased that you're here. Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next month.
