100 Species #24: Daffodil

[urbpan]

One of the first of what turned out to be many Daffodil (Narcissus sp.) blossoms that popped up in one of the perennial beds.

Daffodils embody in many ways my ambivalence toward cultivated flowers. On the one hand, they are one of the first flowers of spring, green shoots poking through the snow, the promise of life and color returning. Alexis has a great fondness for them, which rubs off on me to some extent. But on the other hand, they don't really do anything, that I can see. We did see a cabbage white butterfly resting in the trumpet ("corona") of one flower recently, so they seem to have some interaction with wildlife. The most common cultivated daffodils appear to be so remote from their wild ancestor that no one really knows what it was, or what other organisms interacted with it. I guess that's my problem: I have a hard time seeing the value of a plant unless I know how it interacts with animals--I'm a Kingdomist, I admit it.

The fact that so many humans appreciate the appearance of this plant is reason enough for it to exist, and I have no real right to question it. The joy it brings, and its symbolism (Easter, unrequited love, the return of spring, self-destructive vanity) are all it has needed to develop a symbiotic relationship with humans.

In the greenhouse at the zoo, the wild rodents nibble the stored daffodil bulbs enough to destroy many of them, but not as many as the tulips. The bulbs are toxic, and even humans have eaten them--mistaking them for onions.

Comments

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

I didn't know the bulbs were toxic.

I know people can eat tulip bulbs and the Dutch ate them during the war to keep from starving.

Are they used in chemo therapy? I have always wondered about the daffodil being the flower for cancer fundraising.

I like crocises (sp?)

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

Sometimes bees will take pollen from some kinds of daffodils since there are relatively few other sources, probably more from the older varieties. I don't mind cultivated plants that are pretty but useless, but I hate landscapes that are exclusively ornamental. On a nature walk yesterday in a freezing cold NJ state park we saw lovely tiny spring ephemerals in bloom, rue anemoneme, hepatica, dwarf ginseng, trout lilies, yellow and purple violets, early saxifrage, leatherwood. It was spectacular but not showy. They were all tiny, nothing a normal gardener would boast about. But I wish I could grow them in my backyard.

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

My husband planted a bunch of bulb flowers years ago. After the daffodils and tulips finish flowering each spring, I cut them down low, or the leaves grow into bushlike little messes.