iSB Aj[AnYLi.iriACE,E. [Narcissus. 



W.Med. — Thicket near Sandway, 1846. Wet thicket by Woolverton, near 

 Shorwell, 1846. Near Freshwater, Rev. James Penfald. Plentiful between the 

 second and third mile'^tone out of Newport to Godshill, and at Chillerton, G. 

 Kirkpatrick, Esq. .'.'.' Near Swainston, JRev. Wm. Daruin Fox !.'.' 



/3. Occasionally a specimen or two growing with the sinjfle sort, but rarely. A 

 solitary clump in Centurion's copse, amongst thousands of the single kind, un- 

 questionably wild, and perfectly similar to the double garden Daffodil. A very 

 double but certainly wild specimen on a bank nearYaverland. More frequent in 

 meadows and pastures near habitations ; in a field near Bembridge farm. Field 

 at Woodvale, W. Cowes. 



y. On the steep bushy bank behind Apse farm, overlooking the garden, in 

 which it also grows plentifully, though appearing rather to have encroached upon 

 the grass-plats from the station above than to have escaped from the former, 

 where it has not become double. 



Plant from about 6 to 12 inches high, rarely taller. Bulb from the size of a 

 nutmeg to that of a walnut, covered with a brownish cuticle, and emitting many 

 whitish fibres from the base. Leaves usually two or three, seldom more, bluish or 

 glaucous green, erect, narrow, channelled and twisted, sometimes ^ an inch broad, 

 obtuse, rounded and slightly thickened at the apex, scarcely keeled, about as long 

 as the scape, attenuated downwards, and enclosed below in a short, membranaceous, 

 truncate sheath. Scape 2-eclged, twisted, strongly furrowed. Floioer solitary, 

 large (1^ inch to 2 inches long), handsome, drooping in the bud, afterwards hori- 

 zontal or nearly erect, with a weak but agreeable fresh scent. Spathe wrinkled, 

 scariose and membranaceous, brownish towards the point. Perianth in six mostly 

 unequal, ovate or ovato-lanceolate, acute, waved or twisted segments, pale yellow- 

 ish white, merging into yellow and green at the back on its tubular portion" Cup 

 (covona, DC; nectary, Sm.) of an elegant golden yellow, tubuloso-campanulate, 

 the margin obscurely cut into six irregularly notched and crisped lobate segments. 

 Stainens much shorter than the cup, erect; ^^«men(s tapering, yellow; anthers 

 quite erect, long and narrow, with whitish yellow yoWen. Style a little longer 

 than the stamens, trigonous, each angle terminating in a hollow fringed lobe of 

 the stigma. Capsule the size of a hazel-nut, obovato-subglobose, very obtusely 

 trigonous, yellowish brown when ripe, coriaceous. Seeds large, numerous, deep 

 rich brown, highly polished, ovoido-rotundate or by compression subangular, with 

 a crest (raphe) along their inner side ; at length wrinkled by the contraction of 

 the fleshy albumen. 



In the wild double variety, /3., the perianth-segments are always of a full yel- 

 low like the cup, and in this state I cannot distinguish it from the common great 

 yellow Daffodil of the gardens, though that is supposed to be a different species, 

 the N. major of the ' Botanical Magazine,' and a native of Spain. In one or two 

 of the stations here given it is possible the plants may have originated from gar- 

 dens, though their smaller size is against such a supposition ; in the remaining 

 localities the sequestered situation is without doubt unexceptionable, and an 

 inspection of the double variety there, growing amidst the common or single wild 

 sort, will, I think, suffice to convince any one of the latter being equally the 

 parent of the wild and garden double Daffodils. 



The variety y. differs from the common state of the plant in having the perianth- 

 segments of almost as deep a yellow as the cup, much less spreading, nearly plane 

 or scarcely at all twisted, narrower, firmer or less membranaceous in texture, 

 rounded or somewhat obtuse, without a minute but very distinct apiculus. The 

 whole plant, though variable in size, is much smaller than the common form, 

 which is, I have little doubt, the A'", bicolor of Brotero, whilst this is the N. 

 Pseudo-narcissus of the same author, and, as the late Piofessor Don thought, of 

 Linnsus also. It almost seems to connect our common species with the 

 N. minor of the gardens. 



The single wild Daffodil has by some been supposed of exotic origin, and to 

 have been introduced by the monks in the middle ages, from being so often found 

 near the ruins of monasteries, but it is certainly indigenous to the South and 

 middle of England in the most sequestered places, though in early times, when 



