Trumpet majors

WAS there ever such an obliging and ubiquitous plant as the daffodil?

- Charles Quest-Ritson

Wise gardeners have them in flower from December to May. Impossible to kill, they will thrive in any soil or position, competing successfully with grass, tree roots and herbaceous plants for nourishment. Their greatest need, judging by the conditions in which they grow in the wild, is for plenty of water at their time of maximum growth.

Were they not so easy to cultivate, we should esteem them much more highly. The city of Aberdeen has planted mile after mile of its roadside verges with daffodils, great swathes of them, one variety at a time. Many English expatriates in tropical climates pine for them, just as we might yearn to grow their exotic orchids in England.

The botanical name for a daffodil is Narcissus, which commemorates the beautiful youth who came to a bad end in Greek mythology. All daffodils are narcissi, but not all narcissi are daffodils; some are jonquils, for example. Botanists have found Narcissus a difficult genus to classify. Part of the reason is that botanists themselves are divided into two subspecies, the lumpers and the splitters. King of the splitters was Adrian Haworth who, in 1831, recognised 150 species; the chief lumper of Victorian times was John Baker in 1875, who would allow only 16.