Daffodil: The remarkable story of the world's most popular spring flower

by Noel Kingsbury, Jo Whitworth (Photographer)

Overview

There is no harbinger of spring like a field or garden filled with bright yellow daffodils. But the world of the daffodil is much more than just its place in the march of the seasons. It’s a plant whose history starts with the tombs of the Pharaohs, through pre-Darwin evolutionary theory and Cornwall’s burgeoning bulb business, and leads to the current explosion of varieties from plant breeders seeking new colors, fragrances, and forms.

Daffodil reveals a global plant infatuation that has led to more than 25,000 cultivars available in nearly every shade of yellow (and now pink, orange, and white). Noel Kingsbury tells the tale through an engaging narrative history and plant portraits that highlight more than 200 varieties. Jo Whitworth's revealing photography shows a side of the daffodil rarely seen. Plant lovers will relish the stories and gardeners will cherish the cultivation notes, plant descriptions, and recommendations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604693188
Publisher:	Timber Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/24/2013
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Noel Kingsbury is a researcher, writer, and teacher. A gardener since childhood, he has run a nursery, designed gardens and public spaces, and done doctoral research at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Landscape on the ecology of ornamental perennials. He lives and gardens in the Welsh Borders near Hay-on-Wye.

Jo Whitworth is an award-winning photographer based in the UK. Her inspirational images feature in a wide range of books and magazines. While taking photographs for this book, she discovered the original seedbeds where Victorian breeders conducted their trials, found colonies of wild daffodils alive and well in British meadows, and photographed contemporary breeders at work across the British Isles from Cornwall to Scotland.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: Daffodils and Their Place in Our Culture
Daffodils are somehow the quintessential spring flower. The appearance of their distinctive yellow blooms is a sure sign that winter has either ended or is about to soon. Unlike the tulip, which appears to be dependent on us for its continued re-emergence in the garden, daffodils reappear faithfully every year; and not just in the garden but in places such as roadsides, churchyards, and parks where they have been planted, often decades ago—in some cases over a century ago. These plants are clearly great survivors, thriving even in places where they have obviously been accidentally dropped or discarded—the flowers frequently mark where someone emptied the back of their car of garden waste into a ditch or hedge, little thinking that the event and scene of their crime would be annually and flamboyantly marked for so many years to come.
           
There are around twenty-seven thousand unique cultivars of daffodil. Unlike other flowers—roses, tulips, orchids, whose numbers of deliberately bred varieties range across great swathes of the spectrum or show off an extravagant range of shapes—daffodils are remarkably alike. All single cultivars have the same basic shape—a cup (also called a corona) and petals (although botanists do not call them petals); even the doubles or the strange “split-corona” varieties easily betray their basic inheritance. Above all there is the colour, more or less every shade of yellow which can be imagined, but very little else: white of course, but then almost every flower has at least one white variant, some flashes of orange, but never very much, and that’s it; there are so-called pink varieties, but they are more of a tan-apricot. One of the fascinating things about daffodils is just how much play we can have with the same basic design and the same colour scheme, about how much breeders, the bulb trade, and we—the customers—keep on coming back for more, as if we can never leave this most successful design alone.
           
At the heart of this book is the idea of the daffodil as a metaphor for our relationship with nature, as being a cultivated plant, but one which is capable of also living its own life. Like cats, they feel only partly domesticated. The book is as much about the daffodil as cultural icon as it is about the daffodil as garden plant. Daffodils appear in paintings and in poetry, as emblems of spring and of nature. This cultural status is surely a large part of their appeal; we buy them as tight buds from florists as early as we can at the end of the winter not just because we know they will be pretty and yellow, but because Wordsworth and other poets wrote about them, and they appear endlessly reproduced as a sign of spring at every level of art from the museum-hung masterpiece to souvenir-shop kitsch. The daffodil cut-flower industry is a big one, and historically it was something of a pioneer in the craft and business of how to transfer the golden promise of spring several hundred miles, from the field to the vase on the table. The social history of this industry is part of this book too, as it has been an important driver in directing how daffodils have been bred and appreciated.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 6

Introduction: Daffodils and their Place in Our Culture 8

1 Daffodil Definitions 32

2 From the Tombs of the Pharaohs Early Daffodil History 60

3 Travelling, Changing, and Multiplying the Nineteenth Century 96

4 Cornwall Centre of the Daffodil Universe 114

5 Breeders and Conservers Daffodil People 138

6 Gone Native Daffodil Colonies and Hotspots 162

7 Daffodils in the Garden 178

Plant Lists 202

Select Bibliography 205

Sources and Resources 207

Photo Credits 210

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

“Here's what there is to love: History, science, botany, yummy photos, explanation of the divisions, how daffodils moved across Britain, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia, shows and judging…This is a charming, informative and beautiful book!”

All the Dirt on Gardening - Martha Stoodley

“A delightful book for almost any gardener, and a wonderful resource for designers who are looking for something different.”

Garden Design Online - Jane Berger

A fascinating, up-beat book with floral sunshine on every page. One you will look at again and again.

Gardens Illustrated - Matthew Biggs

A fascinating, up-beat book with floral sunshine on every page. One you will look at again and again.” —Gardens Illustrated
 
“A delightful book for almost any gardener, and a wonderful resource for designers who are looking for something different.” —Garden Design Online

“The book, richly illustrated by the photographs of Jo Whitworth, is a thorough treatment of the reliable spring flower. Kingsbury delves into its history and the origins of its name, explores the follower’s symbolism and explains its life cycle, how it’s classified and even its chemical properties.” —Akron Beacon Journal

“A recognized authority on the selection and management of ornamental perennials, Kingsbury relates the role of daffodils in legend and history. He emphasizes their great diversity and the divisions within these different forms. . . . Photographer Jo Whiteworth captures the glory of daffodils in individual portraits of plants, blended together in fields, hedges, and borders.” —Chicago Botanic Garden
 
“Here’s what there is to love: History, science, botany, yummy photos, explanation of the divisions, how daffodils moved across Britain, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia, shows and judging. . . . This is a charming, informative and beautiful book!” —All the Dirt on Gardening

“What a fascinating book!” —Cold Climate Gardening
 
“Everything one needs to know about the species is covered. . . . With color photography by Jo Whitworth on every page, the book explains the daffodil’s early history. . . . and spread around the world.” —Desert Exposure
 

From the Publisher

A fascinating, up-beat book with floral sunshine on every page. One you will look at again and again.

Akron Beacon Journal

“Richly illustrated… a thorough treatment of the reliable spring flower. Kingsbury delves into its history and the origins of its name, explores the follower's symbolism and explains its life cycle.”

Desert Exposure