XXVI.— THE DAFFODIL. 
Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus Linne. 
I T is impossible to keep to plain prose when writing of the Daffodil. Poetical 
associations cling to its every mention. 
The genus Narcissus is not a large one, some forty species at most, and belongs 
mainly to the sunny regions of the Mediterranean. There one species is almost 
certainly the Rose of Sharon of Holy Writ, and of it Mohammed said : — “ He 
that has two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for some flower of the Narcissus, 
for bread is the food of the body, but Narcissus is the food of the soul.” 
Another, the lovely Pheasant’s-eye Narcissus (TV. poeticus L.), was the plant to 
which the earliest botanists Theophrastus and Dioscorides applied the name 
Narcissus , whilst it owes its specific name to its celebration by the Classical poets. 
Though mythology might say that it arose from the metamorphosis of the 
beauteous youth who became enamoured of his own reflection, one of the old poets 
objects that Persephone was gathering Narcissi in the plains of Enna in Sicily — or 
was it in Nysia in Asia ? — long before that youth was born. Pliny is accepted by 
modern authorities when he says that the name comes from vdpKrj, narke, torpor, 
and refers to the narcotic effect of the plant, so that the story of the vain youth was, 
perhaps, only invented to explain a name the origin of which had been forgotten. 
As not being the plant referred to by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and the 
ancient poets, our more northern species was termed by Dodoens Pseudo-narcissus , 
the False Narcissus ; but it is as Daffodils, the “ Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty,” 
that, with Shakespeare, Herrick, Wordsworth, Keats, and other poets innumerable, 
we love this exquisite plant. 
Its ovoid blackish tunicate bulb readily multiplies individuals, which may thus 
extend their area over meadow or woodland. Many species have naturally— being 
easily cultivated — been grown in our gardens for ages, so that even Gerard, in the 
reign of Elizabeth, is able to speak of twenty-four different kinds as then commonly 
grown in London gardens ; and, especially if some supposed medical virtues could 
be ascribed to them, they would certainly not have been absent from the monastic 
gardens of medieval times. There are, indeed, some local names which suggest the 
connection of this flower in the popular mind with neighbouring religious houses ; 
and undoubtedly many localities, especially for the double variety, may be attributed 
to monastic introduction. 
The keenest criticism of the claims of plants to appear in lists of native species 
has not, however, excluded the opinion that this one is truly indigenous; and when, 
whilst, in the words of Mr. Masefield’s grim poem, 
“The grass is dotted blue-grey with their leaves, 
Their nodding beauty shakes along the ground,” 
