Daffodils take many forms; plant breeders beginning with a handful of species or wild daffodils 200 years ago, began to cross-breed them, first out of botanical curiosity and later to create beautiful new forms.
The breeding program gained momentum over the past 100 years, with a flood of new types and varieties almost too great to comprehend.
Today there are no less than 10,000 known named varieties, many of which are, of course, obsolete. Going back to their origin in species, the ancestry of the wide varieties is often complex and confusing.
However, some system of orderly arrangement in classes is necessary: for growers who must list them in their catalogs, for exhibitors at flower shows, and for use in descriptions of varieties in journals, literature, and online in all parts of the world.
Therefore, an exemplary system has been devised for classifying all daffodils.
The Royal Horticultural Society of London compiled the original key in 1908 and later revised and approved by the General Bulb Grower’s Society of Haarlem, Holland, in 1950 to bring it up to date. At that time, the names given previously to certain classes – Barrii, Leedsii, and Incomparabilis – were dropped.
A classification table like this always looks forbidding to the layman when approaching a new subject. However, it is not as challenging to master as would appear at first. It’s a little like becoming acquainted with all the members of a new family in the neighborhood.
Before long, the distinguishing traits of each individual are recognizable at a glance. While learning this key, the catalogs of daffodil bulb dealers are a constant aid, for each variety is pegged in the right hole.
Every gardener will get a sense of personal satisfaction in speaking with one of the important plant genera of our times.
From the very beginning, even a superficial study of the key reveals the remarkable diversity of the whole genera. There’s much more to it than the famous yellow trumpets and starry-eyed poet’s narcissus.
It soon becomes evident why increasing numbers of landscape gardeners have made a hobby of growing and collecting daffodils.
As in any key, there are a few terms to learn. These terms are used in defining each class or division of daffodil: Trumpet, cup, or corona – The center portion of the flower varies in shape from long and tubular to a flattened disc.
- Perianth – The wheel or circle of sepals and petals surrounding the central cup.
- Length of perianth segment – The extreme length of a part or petal measured inside from its junction with the corona along the mid-rib to its extreme tip.
- Length of the corona – The extreme length measured from its junction with the perianth to the end of its furthest extension when the edge is flattened out.
- Colored Means yellow or anything other than white.
The Classification of Daffodils
As Defined by the American Daffodil Society
Division 1 – Trumpet
One flower to a stem, corona (trumpet or cup) as long or longer than the perianth segments (petals).
Division 2 – Large Cup
One flower to a stem, corona (cup) more than one-third but less than equal to the length of the perianth segments (petals).
Division 3 – Short Cup
One flower to a stem, corona (cup) not more than one-third the height of the perianth segments (petals).
Division 4 – Double
Daffodils have clustered cups, petals, or both. There can be one or more flowers per stem.
Division 5 – Triandrus
Usually more than one flower to a stem, head drooping, perianth segments often reflexed and of silky texture.
Division 6 – Cyclamineus
One flower to a stem, perianth significantly reflexed and corona straight and narrow. Some exceptions exist.
Division 7 – Jonquilla
Several flower heads to a stem, flowers are usually fragrant, the branch is round in cross-section, and foliage is often rush-like.
Division 8 – Tazetta
Usually, three to twenty flowers to a stout stem, sweet scented and very short cupped. Perianth segments are rounded and often somewhat crinkled.
Division 9 – Poeticus
Usually, one flower to a stem. White petals sometimes stained with the corona color at the base, small flat cup edged with red. Fragrant.
Division 10 – Bulbocodium Hybrids
Small flowers resemble a “hoop petticoat” form.
Division 11 – Split Corona
Corona split – usually more than half its length.
- Collar Daffodils – Split-corona daffodils with the corona segments opposite the perianth segments; the corona segments usually in two whorls of three.
- Papillon Daffodils – Split-corona daffodils with the corona segments alternate to the perianth segments; the corona segments usually in a single whorl of six.
Division 12 – Other Cultivars
Daffodils do not fall into any of the previous categories.
Division 13 – Species
All species and reputedly wild forms.
Daffodils are adaptable. Put them in the sun or shade, near water or a rock ledge, clustered in rough grass or under trees – in all these situations, daffodils thrive.
A sunny spot in a flower border is fine for daffodils, particularly strong-growing trumpets, large and small cups, doubles, and poetaz varieties. But full sun all day is not at all necessary. If buildings, hedges, trees, or shrubs cast shade on the ground part of the day, there is no harm.
The transparent bright colors of wide varieties, such as those having pink or orange cups, last longer and stay fresher in the garden if the sunlight is filtered through tree or shrub branches overhead.
Daffodils are particularly effective when the bulbs are planted in clusters. The number placed in one group will vary, depending upon the size of the garden and the way the bulbs are being used. One should try to put no less than five bulbs in a group, all of one variety.
Since varieties flower at different times, with the blooming season of the family extending for six to eight weeks in any area, many color combinations with other garden flowers can be planned.
Grape hyacinths colored bright lavender blue may be clustered in front of golden-colored daffodils or sprinkled through an open mass of pure white daffodils. The sparkling colors of early flowering tulips contrast sharply with daffodils’ soft yellows and whites.
Dutch Hayacinths Colors
All the colors of Dutch hyacinths blend beautifully with tinted or white daffodils. English bluebells (scillas) in clear Wedgwood blue are fine companions for daffodils in the garden or naturalized under trees.
Many perennials and bedding plants bloom at daffodil time and blend beautifully, including violets, forget-me-nots, pansies, primroses, bleeding-heart, and assorted rock garden plants.
Every foundation planting around the house offers ideal spots for clusters of daffodils. Even where deciduous shrubs are the significant planting around the home, daffodils make perfect fillers in between and in front to provide early spring color before most shrubs bloom.
Conventional foundation plantings composed of different evergreens, including azaleas and broadleaved evergreens, provide for daffodil blooms a rich background that is just made to order.
Space in front of the evergreens, between them and the lawn, or between one evergreen and the next, can be dug over and planted into clusters of bulbs. Here the ground need not be disturbed from one year to the next.
Daffodils can make a carpet of bloom under choice flowering trees and shrubs situated in critical spots in shrub and flower borders. The bulbs may be selected to bloom when there are flowers overhead or not, as one desires.
For example, daffodils may supply much-needed color under the bare dark grey branches of flowering dogwood or tree wisteria.
There are many problem spots around the grounds where conventional garden flowers cannot be grown. The most common of these is in the shade of deciduous trees where the land is not cultivated.
This is the ideal place to naturalize daffodils – in other words, plant them in large informal groups as though they were growing wild.
Large and small cup kinds are ideally suited to naturalize, and so are the sweet-scented poet’s narcissus, even in nearby streams and pools where the ground is moist.
Daffodils even have the stamina to compete with rough grass growing in an un-mowed area beyond the lawn. The daffodil foliage can ripen as it should before the tall grass is cut like hay.
Frequently, such an area is found around the home fruit orchard, and it’s a breathtaking sight to see the landscape speckled in spring with bright dancing daffodils.
All the little forms of daffodils – species and hybrids – are ideally suited to the rock garden. Here, their happy, dancing blossoms keep with the size and character of other dwarf rock-garden plants.
by Paul Frese
6885 by NA