Daffodil

Where it grows

Wild daffodils grow in damp meadows and open oak woodland from Portugal and Spain through France and Britain. Commercial cut-flower production is concentrated in Cornwall, Lincolnshire, and the Scilly Isles, which ship daffodils to supermarkets across Europe from January through April.

How to recognise it

Each bulb produces flat, grey-green strap-like leaves and one or more leafless flower stems. The flower has six outer tepals fused at the base around a long central trumpet, or corona. Wild forms tend to be small and bicoloured with a pale outer ring and yellow trumpet; cultivars exaggerate every feature, from doubled trumpets to pink coronas.

Garden & cultural uses

Daffodil bulbs are the commercial source of galantamine, a compound used in some Alzheimer’s medications. In the garden they naturalise reliably in grass, multiplying year on year, and their toxic alkaloids mean deer and rodents leave them alone.

In symbolism

The daffodil is the national flower of Wales, worn on Saint David’s Day. Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” fixed it in English poetry as a sign of irrepressible spring.