Wild daffodil
Who am I?
I’m a little shy and might twist away from you slightly, but nod in agreement or shake my head. I’m quite dainty and not as tall as some of my cousins. I have a subtle, delicate fragrance and am very sociable if left to my own devices. I’m Andy Dean! No, sorry, I’m a wild daffodil, of course!
I say “of course”, but do we take wild daffodils for granted as part of the British landscape? Perhaps we expect to see them more than we should.
The Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI) categorise wild daffodils as ‘Rare or scarce in Great Britain’. Britain is mapped into 10-kilometre squares called hectads, which are how botanists keep track of where plants naturally occur in the wild. There are somewhere in the region of 2,850 hectads across Great Britain, so when the BSBI say a plant is Rare - found in 15 or fewer hectads, or Scarce - found in 100 or fewer, and given that these things are pretty hard to count with complete accuracy, the estimate is that they occur, even in the best-case scenario, in well under 4% of the country, and at worst under 1%.
In other words, even if these plants feel familiar to us, they can be missing from most of the landscape.
Of course, we are still seeing daffodils, but not necessarily the wild ones. This can become problematic for nature because native or indigenous plant stock holds local ecological memory, with genetics shaped by soils, climate, seasons and insect pressure over thousands of years. Insects and other wildlife have evolved alongside local plant populations, often depending on their specific chemistry, timing and growth patterns, especially specialist feeders such as caterpillars that eat the plant itself rather than feed on nectar. When native stock is replaced with imported plants that are not actually the same species, or with heavily bred plants, that relationship can break down. The plant may still look right, but it no longer functions in the same way as food or habitat. Over time, this loss of local genetic diversity weakens resilience to disease and climate change, and the wider food web begins to thin, leaving landscapes that are green, but increasingly empty, as the ecosystem quietly stops working.
Well… that’s cheerful. Bye!
No, really, we do have agency in this. Much of the decline in wild daffodils is due to industrial farming and habitat loss. So if we have any interest in supporting wildlife, we can shrug off the need for showy non-native species or cultivars, which the Victorians well and truly got us hooked on, and grow the good old original wild daffodil, with probably one of the longest scientific plant names out there: Narcissus pseudonarcissus subsp. pseudonarcissus. Because when a plant (or animal, for that matter) is threatened by extinction, it’s never just one factor that finishes it off. Loss of native habitat and climate change are big ones, but in this case the spread from our gardens of non-native plants can also play a role, either by out-competing wild varieties through hybrid vigour, or by hybridising with native stock. Our gardens are increasingly becoming places that can help protect the countryside, rather than work against it.
The wild daffodil in Britain is most strongly associated with the wetter western half of the country. Its core native range lies in south-west England and parts of Wales, with long-established populations in Devon, Somerset, the Gloucestershire–Herefordshire Welsh border country, and Cumbria - I think some poet wrote something about them there… In Wiltshire, it becomes increasingly localised and fragmented, occurring close to the edge of its natural range. But it can still be found here, most likely in ancient woodland, or land that once was ancient woodland, for which the plant is an indicator, perhaps now an ancient hedgerow. Or in a damp meadow; again, the wild daffodil is an indicator of unimproved meadows, meaning those not enhanced for farming (for example, by adding fertilisers).
So, if we’re out and about and see a clump of daffodils - especially if that clump is part of a wider spread, is somewhere between 25 and 35 cm tall, not overly showy, has a slightly darker golden trumpet (corona) than the outer petals (tepals), and a slight scent - it’s likely to be native.
If a daffodil has a red-edged cup, a very large trumpet with small outer petals, is white, cream, orange or apricot, is very small, or has a strong fragrance, it is likely to be a non-native species or a cultivated variety, rather than Britain’s wild daffodil.
Please do let me know if you find what you believe to be native daffodils — I’d really like to know!
Andy
Photo: Erika Varga
