Narcissus pseudonarcissus: Graceful Spring Welcome by Wild Daffodils

Summary: Narcissus pseudonarcissus, an Old World native perennial, enjoys global appreciation as a reliable spring flower, with lovely cream to yellow blossoms.

forestal splendor of wild daffodils, Forêt d'Arc-en-Barrois, northeastern France: image by Clément Huvig, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Narcissus pseudonarcissus is an Old World perennial flowering plant native to Western Europe from England and Wales southward across the western continent to Portugal and Spain.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus has become naturalized in such far-flung homelands as Oceania's Australia and New Zealand and South America's Falkland Islands as well as central and coastal Canada and the United States.

The delicate yet hardy plant is known commonly as common daffodil, daffodil, downdilly, Lent lily or wild daffodil.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus' stem grows from a brown-skinned bulb. Setting off the stem are basal leaves that emerge from the stem's base as slightly flattened, long, and narrow foliage.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus tends to produce a single flower but may also produce an umbel, a cluster of about 20 short flower stalks radiating from a common point. Coloration ranges from cream to white to yellow. Its trumpet-shaped corona, framed basally with six tepals, modestly hangs downward and dances with breezes.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus blooms across spring, from late February to May.

Last year, wild daffodils appeared daintily and sparsely across the eastern portion of the meadow that defines the northern border of my yard. I carefully mowed around them, even long after their spent flowers had shriveled into nothingness.

This year three brutal snowstorms crushed my yard with 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) of recalcitrant snow.

Just before the snowfalls, grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) had pushed their leaves upward for their annual appearance in the garden strip along the northern stretch of my front porch. Unfortunately, the snowy onslaughts smothered their floral ambitions.

But wild daffodils surprised me by dotting the front porch garden with a dozen plants.

The next pleasant gift from the unexpected floral visitors was their opening late in the afternoon, after 4:30 p.m., on Sunday, March 22. As I stepped from the porch onto the sidewalk and prepared to turn right to cross the south lawn and burn hefty branches broken off the nearby Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) by the weight of the snow, flashes of creamy floral colors caught my attention.

Even one daffodil plant prettifies its landscape and extends a graceful welcome to all viewers.

Imagine the splendor of a dozen or more! Such is my felicitous gift from nature.

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credit:

forestal splendor of wild daffodils, Forêt d'Arc-en-Barrois, northeastern France: image by Clément Huvig, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foret_de_haute_marne_by_ch.JPG

For further information:

Van Beck, Sara L. Daffodils in American Gardens, 1733-1940. Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2015.