Daffodils have to be one of our planet’s toughies. Despite their frilly, so-called girlie looks, daffodils are clad like M1 Abrams tanks. Think about that for a minute. Remind you of anyone you know? Just sayin’ -it is Women’s History Month.
Daffodils were actually introduced into gardens in Europe before 300 BC. The Greek philosopher Theophratus listed and described early kinds of them in his nine-volume Enquiry into Plants. Daffodils came to Britain with the Romans. Maybe Julius Caesar him-self carried a few in his bags when he arrived on the island more than two millennia ago. Today we caution that daffodil bulbs can be poisonous and wouldn’t think of them as medicinal, but back in those days before Jesus walked around in Judea, the Romans used the sap from daffodil leaves to heal.
So many species of daffodils exist in southern Europe and North Africa that it boggles the mind. Botanists identify 36 distinct species and estimates of the number of cultivated varieties available nowadays range from 13,00-26,000. Daffodils grow at the seaside and in sub-alpine meadows and everywhere in between, shade or sun.
In our parochial Anglo-American tradition, of course, we consider them English: largely, I suppose, because of Wordsworth’s poems. Let it be known here that it was Dorothy Wordsworth, William’s sister, who turned his attention to them. (We know that from their diaries.) So in Women’s History month let’s think of them as Dorothy Wordsworth’s. She rustled him up to go out for a walk and there they were “A host of golden daffodils … Ten thousand saw I at a glance.”
Daffodils are the national flower of Wales and the Welsh wish on the first daffodil as we do on the first robin. March 1 in Wales is St. David’s Day and everyone sports a daffodil in their buttonhole. Some call daffodils the Lent-lily just as gardeners call hellebores Lenten roses. While the early “roses” barely carry color, Lenten lilies strut their stuff mostly in screaming yellow. This is most satisfying after winter’s drab colors. Say your name and say it loudly. I can almost hear Helen Reddy belting out, “I am woman here me roar/In numbers too big to ignore.”
The association of daffodils with the Greek story of Narcissus is intriguing. All daffodils belong to the botanical genus of Narcissus.
Once upon a time, Narcissus rejected the advances of Echo who then spent the rest of her life roaming the woods heartbroken. In the end she dwindled to an echo. Deciding to teach Narcissus a thing or two, the Goddess Nemesis drew him to a stream where the lad saw his own reflection, fell in love with it, fell into the stream, and drowned. Hmm.
So, are our stop-light yellow flowers so-named because they often flourish on the banks of streams and rivers? Or, could it be because daffodils bend their necks slightly toward the ground as if they were admiring themselves in a reflection? Take your pick. Maybe this swaggering beauty is just in love with itself.
What an odd word “daffodil” is. Where did that come from? It turns out that it comes from “asphodel,” a variant of Middle English “affodill.” We can trace back to the Greek word “asphodelos” which is of unknown origin. Darn. Likely the “d” got tacked on by the Dutch or by the English misunderstanding the Dutch. Those great bulb growers of the 17th century (and still today) say “de affodils” (“the asphodel”) and when bulbs were shipped all around that world, the “d” became part of the name in English.
Earlier this month all those green spears shot high in a day or two under temperatures in the ‘50s and’60s. This past weekend, the early varieties, then in full bloom, curled into themselves for a couple of below 20-degree mornings looking like wads of tissue. Their emerald green leaves paled to a hypothermic, ghastly green. How else to read this but as loss?
We all threw on mufflers and mittens, muttering about the unseasonal cold -— and the weekend passed. As temperatures warmed, out near the birdfeeder and under the white pine, recovery from frostbite was afoot and that recovery looks like straight-out resurrection. All the daffodils are standing straight and bright as ever.
Our tiniest and earliest ones live under a white pine tree. They open first and have done so for 20 years. For half of that time they were forgotten, presumed dead. A friend had sent our daughter a pot of blooming bulbs the spring after we lost her brother. Lovely gesture, lovely gift. After the blooms faded, the girl and I planted the bulbs under our young white pine. Life was busy and for a decade that spot served as our stick pile, the bulbs buried under branches and leaves.
The girl grew up and moved away. I grew older and retired and it was high time to move the unsightly yard waste pile from our front yard. The next spring, now a decade ago, here came the daffodils, first one and then another, and then a grape hyacinth. Where did these come from? And then we remembered. Whoa. These bulbs weren’t hardened for our region; they had come from a hothouse, and yet there they were — and here they are today. (For years they surely bloomed unseen under that higgledy piggeldy stick pile.)
This second half of March has brought us cold temperatures and icy winds, but we all know it’s time to get a start. Have you “gotten a start”? Are you reviving and proving your true colors? As a meme circulating recently says, “Drink water. Get sunlight. You’re basically a houseplant with more complicated emotions.” Check out the potatoes on your counter. They’re developing “eyes.” They know what’s what.
Our Master Gardeners are knocking it out of the park these days. Check out the new Seed Library on second floor of the Crawfordsville Disrict Public Library … Ten packets for free. Then put on a yellow hat and get on out there!
Dr. Helen Hudson provides her Real Food column to the Journal Review.
