The cultivated history of daffodils as we know it

A daffodil admiring itself in the mirror, ca. 2008. I forgot to date it.

Note bene: This blogpost began as an excerpt from a letter I wrote to novelist Gregg Dunnett who emigrated to Spain from Britain and was missing his daffodils. I never did get around to reshaping my notes into a blogpost, until a year later, so these notes are convoluted. 

Lechyd da! Those daffodils that everybody bashes over their neighbors’ heads in Wales on March 1 may not be native to Britain because daffodils, as we know them, along with rabbits, originally hailed from Iberia! So get your repatriation papers in order. 

In Wales, the daffodil is known as cenhinen Bedr or ceninn Pedr in Welsh—that which is like St. Peter’s leeks. It’s a complicated simile. The daffodil leaves resembled a leek that rules out daffodils as being native in Wales as they didn’t even know its name. According to a 1630 broadside ballad, the Welsh wore leeks in their hats to recognize friend from foe before the battle won on St David's Day. And ate them afterwards. Crossing leeks and daffodils, the national flower of Wales, could be dangerous as they are, like all lilies, extremely toxic. Don’t tell Saint Dewi.

Sant Dewi stained glass window at St Non's Chapel; note the flowers—daffodils. Wiki

To be fair, there might also have been a “native” plant that resembled the narcissus/daffodil/jonquil in the British Isles. However, I don’t trust the sources (since they’ve all copied each other, warts, and all) though I’ve included the links below. People often confuse the concept of native wildflowers with escaped naturalized cultivar flowers. Like with mustard, forget-me-nots, and Scottish bluebells…. the word “wild” can swing both ways.

But I did find this: “ The only species of narcissus native to Britain is the rather demur Lent Lily…” However, The National Records of Scotland misidentified the daffodil, or narcissus as a member of the Primulaceae family. Ak! Nope. Strike the word, “native,” add “naturalized.” (Unless it is a primrose —not a daffodil.) At least Wikipedia got that part right—they came from Iberia. I should’ve just begun my quest with Wikipedia, and saved myself a lot of grief, but I wanted original sources.

That classification error by The National Records of Scotland led me on a merry Google chase—because despite Easter being movable feast, the idea of a flower named after Lent certainly suggests a long-term cultivation. For the record, the narcissus or daffodil is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, a lily with six tepals, and not a four-petaled primrose (oxlip looks a bit like a narcissus). And narcissi are not native to the British Isles.

In the middle ages, narcotic cowslips were called St. Peter’s herb. Wiki

And it doesn’t help that the origin and symbology of the daffodil is muddied by the strife between Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose we could blame Martin Luther who never saw it coming when he nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517.

The folklore surrounding the daffodil is diverse. During the middle ages, narcissus was associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection. Its leaves were compared to a spear, its sap was a gateway drug to the undiscovered country from which no one returns. Elysian Fields and all that. I can see the leaves of daffodils compared to spears, and Dame Edna (yes, I met him too) said that gladiolus refers to the Celtic Claymore sword. (See Narcissus in Culture.)

Etymology Online revealed that the word daffodil possibly arrived by way of Middle English affodill " (ca. 1590s) by way of the Dutch affodyle), via medieval Latin, via Ancient Greek—to make numb. Narcissi, like all lilies, are extremely toxic. But despite the added-on article, “d,” an accretion from the Dutch “de affodyle,” references cite the word (d)affodil itself as from an unknown source. Another source stated that affodyle means 'that which comes early.’

I tried another approach. First reference in English. Terminus post quem (TPC—that is, the first ever literary mention I could find…) During the “late 16th and early 17th century botanists and herbalists John Gerard and John Parkinson described them as "Pseudonarcissus Anglicus pleno", "Gerrards double Daffodill".

Ok, that reference suggests that cultivated daffodils were introduced before 1629, as there were notices concerning the introduction of daffodils to the British Isles. This may be one of the earliest citations. (And don’t forget the 1630 Welsh reference to daffodils as Saint David’s leeks). When I looked up the original source, the gardener-monk Gerard wrote that “The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription.” He also noted with almost a nod that they originally came from Spain.

“The double yellow Daffodill hath fmalf finooth narrow leaues of a darke greene colour: among which rifeth up a naked hollow ftalke, of two hands high: bearing at the top a faire and beautifull double yellow flower…The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription. We haue in our London gardens another fort of this common kinde, which naturallic groweth in Spaine, very like vnto our beft knowne Daffodil in fhape and proportion…” —Gerard’s Herbal 1597

Gerard’s Herbal may be a TPQ for the term, daftodowndilly/ daffodowndilly, not A.A. Milne. Move over Winnie the Pooh! But Milne got it right, when the daffodil arrives, it’s a sure sign of spring. Winter is dead. 

Garden historian, Dr. Twigs Way, who is associated with the Cambridge University, gets it wrong too as she too repeats that Britain also has wild daffodils. She goes on to say “Daffodils… have been seen in England since the 17th century; Shakespeare celebrated them as the flower that “comes before the swallow dares”, and bunches of wild blooms were sold by flower girls on the streets of London.” 

The full Shakespeare quote: “Daffodils/ that comes before the swallow dares, and takes /the winds of March with beauty…”, (Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 3), which makes the reference date ca. 1609-11. Too late. Not TPQ.

Dr. Twig’s 17th century reference is too late on the cultural horizon, as by the Elizabethan era, daffodils and asphodels were firmly ensconced, if not entrenched in English literature. Somehow the dubious connection with the asphodel and daffodil ca. the 15th c. isn’t exactly a TPQ either. By the time the Daffodil Society was founded in 1898, the greeny asphodel dominated the decorative arts—especially William Morris’s wallpaper. No, not the wallpaper Oscar Wilde morbidly objected to. (And yes, like Winston, I ended that sentence on a preposition.)

I was reminded that William Carlos Williams wrote: "Asphodel, that greeny flower." I always wondered what the greeny asphodel was. (I was lazy and went to school before internet!) You know how the poets are overfond of death as muse. But Milton said it earlier: “To embathe in nectared lavers strewed with asphodel.” (Comus, 1634). And Tennyson wrote: "Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel." 

And somewhere along the way, the similar sounding asphodel and daffodil and their death mythology were conflated with each other. cross colonization. Deep botany as we know it hadn't yet been invented. Asphodelaceae (which includes the red hot poker plant) wasn’t identified by Carl Linnaeus until 1753. Let that sink in.

So here’s the rub, asphodel is a completely separate family that got kicked out of the lily family along with aloe and asparagus by the way. DNA never lies. Allo? Who’s your daddy? And they do look like our New World Oenothera, aka evening-primrose. And there were no less than 10 different species of asphodel on the Iberian peninsula. The yellow ones do look a bit like daffodils if you have a good imagination, or need glasses and hearing aid.

Cleric Robert Herrick, in To Daffodils (1648), described narcissi as portents of death: Fair Daffodils, we weep to see/ You haste away so soon…And of course, By the time Wordsworth wrote his famous 1804 poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils;/Beside the lake…daffodils were thoroughly naturalized and canonized ad nauseam in English literature.

A teacher asked me for a drawing to go with Wordsworth. I got an epic sunburn in Feb.

Digging deeper, I found a vague reference: “Daffodils were introduced into gardens in about 300 BC. The Greek botanist and philosopher Theophrastus listed and described many of the earliest known kinds of narcissus in his nine-volume 'Enquiry into Plants'. Daffodils were brought to Britain by the Romans who thought that the sap from daffodils had healing powers.” (What? 300 BC? Asphodel or daffodil? Whose gardens? Where?)

I found another plagiarized source: “Narcissi were introduced to the UK in about 300 BC by the Romans who later inexplicably abandoned these blooms.” What? Somebody lifted and condensed  the sentence out of context, replete with the arrival date typo. Now, I’m fairly certain that the Romans had not settled in Britain circa 300 BC. That quote should probably read that in Greece and also in Rome people were cultivating daffodils circa 300 BC. In the Mediterranean, not Britain.

Trying to find out the truth about daffodils from the internet is like trying to sort out whether or not rabbits were brought to southern Britain by the Romans, or if they were introduced later during the Norman Conquest. See, that inexplicable line of logic suggests that daffodils were not introduced to Britain at all by the Romans, but much later. Like the rabbits. It always amazes me that people post nonsense and don’t even verify the basics—like a timeline.

A close-up, Mr. deMille, stabilo, pencil, ca. 1994; original drawing was destroyed.

I tried another approach. DNA. Yep, genetics definitively rules out the possibility of there being any endemic narcissi in Britain (see excerpts from a paper, below). Genetics can measure what is lost in the process of cultivation, and defines Iberia as the homeland of British “wild” daffodils. Iberian narcissi have the most genetic diversity whereas the daffodil cultivars of Britain have a truncated genetic pool. And the answer is daffodils were not introduced by the Romans. Certainly not in 300 BC! 

Also, narcissi weren’t even cultivated until Muslim era ca. the 10th -12th centuries. Etymology Online, footnotes daffodil with: “First reference to the yellow, early spring flower we know by this name (Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus) is from 1590s.” So, I didn’t get my TPQ closure as to when daffodils were introduced to the British Isles, but I can surmise they arrived from Holland somewhere around the 15th to the 16th century, and, as they say, the rest is history. at least the Welsh had enough common sense to not conflate the daffodil with the asphodel and made a leeky simile instead. Ceninn Ped. Happy St. David’s Day.

I was playing with backlighting. These daffodils were miniatures from the supermarket.

Splitting Hares and Rabbiting on

A young brown hare, watercolor, 1502, Albrect Dürer —Wiki

A photographer, hoping to sell prints, conflated rabbits with snowshoe hares calling them Easter Bunnies. Augh! For the record, hares are not bunny rabbits. They're not even distant cousins either. They may look alike, but it's convergent evolution. It's a great herbivore model. But they are a very separate species, even more divergent than sheep are to goats. More like gazelles and sheep. Different genus, Genius!

Through I suspect the hare was the mythological pre-Christian role model, the term, Easter Bunny referred to a rabbit, because in the Middle Ages rabbits (not hares) were called cunnys, which rhymes with bunny and hunny. Baby cunnys were called rabbits (or kits), but that word cunny was later changed to coneys, because prostitutes were called... Well, you get the picture. Coney Island. Rabbits, or....?

European cunnys/conejos (Oryctolagus cuniculus) are not native to most of Europe, they came from Iberia, they're not even native to Northern Europe or Britain. Some historians think rabbits were brought to Northern Europe and Britain by the Romans. But the Romans preferred to eat sleepy doormice. So, this speculation is wrong, as “during the Middle Ages, they were regarded as a high-status food and transported across Europe.” —Discover Magazine

Most historians agree that rabbits were introduced to Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. The Normans brought rabbits to Britain and Ireland. And cunnys were easy dinner fixins'. Which led to a population explosion, and some really weird Medieval manuscript drawings of bloodthirsty hares (not bunnies) armed to the teeth with lances, axes, swords, hellbent on harming humans. 

Hares do not make good pets, they're not domesticated, and share few traits with rabbits. They're solitary creatures, prone to boxing and brawling with potential mates and interlopers alike. The term "mad as a March hare" came from observing their combatative breeding nuptials. (Don't preach to me about the "wrong" use of combatative vs combative. Just. Don't. It's in the OED.) How mad? Go ask Alice.

Lewis Carroll's Alice and the Mad March Hare (a European hare)—Wiki

Mountain hares are smaller than European, or brown hares. The maigheach bhan, or bocaire fasaich, or Scottish mountain hare (Lepus timidus), is a hare of many colors and an astonishing assortment of names: whiddie baudrons, bawtie, cutty, donie, fuddie, lang lugs and maukin. AKA the blue hare, tundra hare, variable hare, the white, snow, or alpine hare (but never an Arctic hare), the mountain hare is big on camo—like ptarmigans and stoats, it turns white in winter—except for the Irish hare (L. t. hibernicus), a separate (sub) species—it prefers to tan the beaches. 

(In Irish mythology, the shapeshifter hare, the giorrea (little deer), is associated with the realm of the Otherworld. To harm a hare carried dire consequences. The warrior Oisín was spirited away to the Otherworld for accidentally wounding a hare with his dart, who was a woman of the Sídhe. Druids used hares in divination and prophesy by catching them, then turning them loose to guise the path of their escape.)

There are hares, and there are even more hares. There are 32 species of hares worldwide, and not one of them can crossbreed with rabbits (they have 48 chromosomes vs. rabbits' 44 chromosomes.) According to an article in LiveScience, “There are … "cryptic species" that appear identical but are genetically distinct.” Probably a good thing too, otherwise we'd have Monty Python killer rabbit-hares running amok armed with swords and whatnot whacking the bushes and our kneecaps.

European explorers were terribly cavalier at identifying Old and New World animals so there were bound to be mix-ups. Take our native North American hares, for example. Jackrabbits are not rabbits. Hares are larger, have longer black-tipped ears, large amber eyes, long hind legs, and are positively antisocial as compared to cuddly wabbits. They also tuck their tails down when they run—and they’re faster too, clocking in at 45MPH.

Despite its confusing common name, a jackrabbit is a hare. Short for jackass-(who looks like a)-rabbit. Got that? Of course, the word “jack” in front of rabbit, sort of like a Cousin Jack reference, as in being distantly related (not Cornish miners), was probably a nod to the fact that the explorers knew the New World creatures were hares. Jacks and Jills refer to hares, not rabbits.

On the other hand, a Belgian hare is not a hare, it's a true rabbit bred to look like a hare. A cottontail, on the other hand, really is a wabbit. Rabbits are social animals and make great pets. Think Peter Rabbit. Not anti-social Jack, or he'll smack the shit outta you. That goes for Jill too. Especially Jill.

According to H. L. Menken, "Zoologically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares." I guess he never saw a cottontail. Or perhaps fuzzy logic was involved. What he probably meant was there are no European rabbits (Oryctolagus) vs. native rabbits in America. Which is true as cottontails (Sylvilagus) are a separate species.

Rabbits and hares from the Leporidae family (not its sub-order, Genus), which is a sub-branch of the order Lagomorpha, which includes rabbits, hares and pikas (sometimes called rock hares). Got that? It's a Kings Played Chess On Fine Grain Sand ss moment... Order, Family, Genus, Species: it goes Lagomorpha, Leporidae. And that's where the semblance ends.

North and South American cottontail rabbits Sylvilagus are the ONLY rabbit that doesn't burrow, like the hare. They're sort of a straddle-the-difference species niche. They're not Old World rabbits. They're more rabbitish than rabbity, at this point, I'm probably splitting hares. Sylvilagus xx— (13 species) are not European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus—there can be only one!), starting with its tail, and its habits. But I'm not about to list all the burrowing/ feeding differences, let alone, weird kinetic skull differences. You'll have to look them up yourself hare. 

BTW, since I know you're dying to ask, cottontails (Sylvilagus) cannot interbreed with domestic European (Oryctolagus) rabbits. Though they can do the down and dirty, and even produce embryos, European rabbits have 22 pairs of chromosomes, while native wild cottontails have 21pairs of chromosomes. Score one for DNA! At least that gene pool's clean.