Many years ago, my young daughter and two friends made three little shelters at the edge of the woods with fallen branches, and in front of each entryway they planted a daffodil bulb to signify planting a garden and to mark where they had spent a long, gentle summer in play. It is not too much to believe that children in early tribal societies of southwest Europe or North Africa where the daffodil originated may have done similar things with similar tokens.
The shelters have now disappeared into the earth, where they belong. The girls have grown up and made their own homes, as they should. Only the daffodils remain to make me smile each morning as I glance into the woods and think of their voices ringing across the valley.
Thalia daffodils scattered amongst hellebores in mid-spring in my garden at Oldmeadow
We are at peak daffodil right now in my part of Virginia. Beyond those three little reminders of days gone past, each morning on my walk I am uplifted by the vibrance and energy of these flowers in gardens all over my community; but also by their effect on others, and the universal joy in them.
Well, perhaps not universal joy.
Don’t get too comfortable with daffodils
While researching the ecological value of daffodils and the genus Narcissus last week for another project, I came across three separate articles from American and British writers of just how terrible they are, and how we should be reexamining our relationship with them.
I am rarely disturbed by personal taste – one man’s daffodil is another man’s dandelion – but this wasn’t the source of my unease. These essays said something greater about culture, and anger, and the transference of human concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, natural and unnatural, upon species fulfilling that most natural of all processes: survival through reproduction and adaptation.
Some baddies doing a good thing — a quick bouquet put together for a friend
In each essay, the daffodil – the flower I had thought a universal joy of spring, and one beloved by gardeners and non-gardeners alike – had been cast as everything from pointless pretty boy, to symbolic oppressor, to countryside vandal. Are humans wrong – or worse, ignorant – to find joy in them?
The ability to comment, or to engage with the discussion was closed on all three articles (which is not unusual as they were over a year old), thus I’d been mulling over my thoughts on this issue ever since. And although I discussed it briefly on The Garden Mixer podcast, I wanted to explore it a little more here.
Where’s the nectar?
Though studies exist on several Narcissus species and their pollinators, it is challenging to find North American studies on the ecological contributions of the genus’ many cultivated varieties. And as so many taxa are hybrids, unless you are a bulb company with skin in the game (or the AI that mines that marketing for content), the going assumption seems to be that most are bereft of nectar, pollen, or fragrance.
I cannot speak upon nectar quantity or quality, as I haven’t the tongue of a bee or the lab of a researcher, but the pollen of many of the hybridized taxa I grow is just as present as that of the species. The fragrance – of interest to some pollinators – ditto.
Pollen grains from N. bulbicodium
Why then is the pollen relatively unattractive, when small bees have been visiting the non-native Galanthus, Helleborus and Iris since February? I can’t answer that, and hope that in time someone can; but as I mentioned above, the daffodil’s attractiveness to humans is not only obvious – in an age of increasing political turmoil and civil unrest, it is sorely needed. You don’t have to pick a team to appreciate a daffodil.
The daffodil is a tough sell for native plant purists
The least damning (and disturbing) of the three articles was a 2021 piece titled “The Daffodil Dilemma in My Wildlife Sanctuary” by Laura Markson, self-confessed “native plant purist” and founder of the non-profit organization Nurture Native Nature. Susan Harris also highlighted this article two years ago here (looks like it’s still doing well in search results for daffodil ecology).
Faced with the many admitted attributes of this non-native flower (low-care, deer resistant, possible horticultural gateway flower for the young), Markson still felt that it should not be planted in public parks (precisely where public funding is scarce), but admitted she had not yet ripped them out of her own garden where she’d planted them years before.
Instead, she’d granted them ‘neutral’ status – a cookie if you will to offer unenlightened neighbors who needed something familiar and beautiful to help them come to terms with her unique landscape choices.
Her essay read like a confession (in case you’d walked by her house and questioned the native plant purity she professed); but it also sent a subtle message to readers. Don’t be one of those ill-informed people who blindly grow daffodils. Or blindly adore them. Be better.
N. romieuxii – another very early favorite in my garden
Flower graffiti
A second article written in 2017 by British naturalist and former director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Mark Avery, essentially asked his audience that age-old Reddit question, “Am I the jerk?” in “Feral Daffodils — Don’t You Just…?”.
Avery felt himself called to “extreme irritation bordering on hate” when he glimpsed a small group of hybrid daffodils planted on the side of a busy road in the countryside, and wanted to know if he was the only one. By the looks of the comments, he wasn’t.
Let us examine for a moment the circumstances that inspire irritation so great that it borders upon hate. Regardless of their passport status, these are vigorous, photosynthesizing, carbon-ingesting, oxygen-creating, soil-improving organisms whose non-native, non ‘natural’ status is presumably put into sharp relief by their placement. Which is:
- Between the paved road and the human-planted hedgerow bordering an agricultural crop.
- From the vantage point of cars whizzing by.
- In a country that’s been crawling with humans for millennia.
Avery realizes that his words are bordering on the irrational, and yet…
Are we still talking about daffodils?
Just to be exquisitely clear, a stranger stopped at the side of the road, and instead of throwing up, or tossing out an old mattress, or their sandwich wrappings, they chose instead to kneel down and plant a flower for other people to see.
A flower that didn’t need cossetting, or weeding, or curating, or anything more from anyone for a very long time. Much like the little ones in my woods. What a despicable act.
Coming across this clump of daffodils where no daffodils should be has the opposite effect on me – They signify a past human story, and I’m curious to know what it is.
Though Avery could find a place in his heart for the British (and European) native Narcissus pseudonarcissus, he felt strongly that there was a morally derived “right place” and a “wrong place” for the vulgarity of hybrid daffodils – and you better not mix them up:
Which is why voters should always find out if their policy makers are relying on ideologues as experts, however impressive their credentials.
Speaking of ideology
The third article was written last March by noted author and lecturer Benjamin Vogt, and titled “On Daffodils, Climate Change, and Colonization”. After reading it, one comes away unclear as to which species Vogt dislikes more: daffodils, or human beings.
In the article, the ecological value of both Galanthus and Narcissus taxa is thoroughly rejected based presumably upon their non-native status, as no studies supporting that assertion are provided (they were asked for later in the article by Vogt).
As I mentioned before, I am having trouble myself finding in-depth studies of same; but conversely, I am not willing to categorically state in the absence of those studies that they have great value, or that they don’t, as the ecological value of any species is not limited to its attractiveness to pollinators.
This article was the most disturbing of the three, though not for the reasons the author attributes to his critics in order to effortlessly silence them (i.e. the desire to avoid uncomfortable topics or the inability to think outside a comfort zone – we’re quite happy to do that at GardenRant).
Instead, because it reduced and corrupted the complex but beautiful reasons for planting a daffodil by humans for humans into an expression of ‘human supremacy’ tainted with the ever-broadening brush of ‘colonialization’.
Other talking points such as racism, sexism, capitalism, privilege, Western civilization, – well, they’re all wrapped up in that daffodil apparently. But, says Vogt contemptuously, let’s not discuss that added layer (that he just brought up) even if we “need a deep, deep rethink”. Instead let’s “just stick to pretty flowers and [those] for whom those flowers are pretty”. You know, simpletons.
Sometimes it really is simple.
The daffodil is not sacrosanct, and its use or overuse in design is worthy of discussion, surely. There are areas in my own garden where certain bulbs have perennialized too well and a strong hand must be employed to recapture the delicacy I’d originally envisioned.
But a defense of daffodils in design is not why I felt called to resurrect these articles for discussion here. Rather it is in defense of being human, and of cultural traditions and joys for which we should not be ashamed. For all of our many faults as a species, our best and kindest moments may very well be embodied in the planting of a daffodil.
That may be as innocent as children playing in the woods, or as mysterious as a stranger taking a moment to plant a bulb in an unexpected space to connect with another stranger on a profoundly human level. When gardeners brighten the lives of people they don’t know, and whose motivations, character, background, ‘privilege,’ and knowledge they cannot presume to assume, the world is a better place.
So let us call them pretty and revel in our joy of them, because they are also something more. They are hope. They are remembrance. They are joy. – MW
Gathering daffodils and the stories that accompany each one with Brent Heath of Brent and Becky’s Daffodils.
In Defense of The Daffodil originally appeared on GardenRant on April 3, 2025.
The post In Defense of The Daffodil appeared first on GardenRant.