THE NARCISSUS. * 75 



of closing on the approach of rain, Daffodils would indeed " fill 

 their cups with tears," as Milton says (meaning Crown Imperials 

 or chequered Daffodils, or Fritillarias, probably), and the corona 

 would have been a drawback instead of a gain. Now a Daffodil 

 flower in its green and early-bud stage is as bolt upright as a 

 spear-head, and covered with a green silk-lined scabbard, called 

 the spathe ; but when the scape approaches its usual height, 

 the bud bends over to one side — the sunny side — and the spathe 

 is ruptured, partly by the bending and partly by the swelling 

 bud, and when the flower opens it is the " nodding Daffodil " 

 of the poets, and the "flower with the bent head " of Gaelic- 

 speaking folk in Scotland and Brittany. This " swan's neck " 

 condition is assumed by the short pedicels only so long as the 

 expanded flowers remain unfertilised, and the moment that in- 

 teresting event happens the flower becomes more and more 

 erect, the perianth leaves and corona become dry and shrivelled, 

 as the spathe did a week earlier, and the erect ovary carries on 

 the perfect growth and ripening of its eventually black seeds. 



Coloue. 



However highly specialised in form and structure, the colour 

 of Daffodils is not, as yet, very high up the scale. The mass 

 of them are yellow — and yellow, as we know, is the primitive or 

 working colour of nearly all flowers, just as the working colour 

 of most leaves is green. We feel quite sure that the Daffodil 

 was originally a green flower ;* indeed it is so still in its earlier, 

 unopened stages, only becoming yellow after its flower-buds are 

 fully grown. The still higher transition from yellow to white is 

 also marked in some advanced forms, the buds being yellowish, 

 and the newly-opened flowers sulphur-coloured gradually fading 

 away to white. So far we have no red colour in a true Daffodil. 

 The highest colour-note in the true Narcissi is purple on the rim 

 of N. poeticus, and when this plant and the Daffodil breed, either 

 on the Pyrenees or in the garden, we get forms with red or orange 

 coronas, like the wild N. Bernardi forms, or garden varieties like 

 " Queen Sophia " and " C. J. Backhouse." Colour has a well-known 



* Pliny, who lived in the time of Christ (a.d. 23-79) followed Theophrastus 

 in his allusion to a Narcissus with "an herbaceous cup," and this kind 

 Turner, in 1548, thought was " our yealowe Daffodyl." 



K 



