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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



We cannot classify Daffodils by their countries ; such an 

 arrangement might have been possible if none had ever been 

 transplanted, but it would be useless to attempt it now. To 

 classify by size would be quite as misleading. Haworth and 

 Herbert recognise that colour is a very important character in 

 this species, and though a division by colour may be open to 

 objections, still it is convenient to make some division into sec- 

 tions, and I can suggest no better character. The division 

 refers to wild Daffodils only ; in the varieties and crosses of 

 cultivation, distinctions of colour, like all other distinctions, 

 become effaced, but for convenience I hope to speak of wild 

 Daffodils under five sections : 1. Discolor. 2. Concolor. 3. Pal- 

 lidus. 4. Albus. 5. Muticus. The last name does not refer to 

 colour, and I shall presently explain the exception. 



No. 1, discolor, includes all, except muticus, in which the 

 perianth and the crown are contrasted in colour. I have 

 avoided the name bicolor as ambiguous. No one knows what 

 Linna3us intended by N. bicolor. In the old herbaria at Kew 

 1 find the name bicolor assigned to forms with narrow leaves, 

 quite different from the so-called bicolor of Haworth. and we find 

 the pure white perianth in many other forms. "We do not know 

 the history of " bicolor of Haworth," but, whether it has a wild 

 origin or not, it certainly belongs to and is a development of 

 section 5, muticus. Section discolor is placed first because it 

 includes the English wild Daffodil, generally accepted as the 

 type of the species. The section is represented in all countries 

 where the species is found wild, but is least common in the 

 Spanish Peninsula, and reaches its largest .wild development in 

 Italy. 



No. 2, concolor, includes all yellow Daffodils in which the 

 difference of colour between the perianth and crown is slight. 

 Besides the old types major and minor, we have spurius of 

 Haworth, probably Italian, also the "Oporto" Daffodil, a 

 varied form prevalent in Northern Portugal, and many others. 

 The section is common in Northern Italy, and the northern 

 parts of the Spanish Peninsula, but scarce in France and the 

 Pyrenees. There is a small Daffodil found near Grasse in the 

 Maritime Alps in which concolorous and discolorous flowers are 

 indiscriminately mixed together. This is the only instance I 

 know where that habit occurs in a truly wild form. 



