Hosts of golden daffodils

‘Golden Harvest’ 1 Y-Y, ‘High Society’ 2 W-GWP, ‘Jetfire’ 6 Y-O; these names strangely preoccupy me at this season of the year. If you think that my trolley and I have gone our separate ways, you cannot be au fait with the classification of Narcissus. If that is the case, I cannot say I exactly blame you, since life is short. However, there is, I assure you, a potent fascination in being able to nail, at a glance, the division to which a particular daffodil belongs. 

There is some point in all keen gardeners knowing about Narcissus classification since, if you order daffodils from a specialist nursery, you will come across these strange compressions. Daffodil breeders have to register their new cultivars in this way with the International Registration Authority, which, since 1955, has been the Royal Horticultural Society, and they find it a useful shorthand when dealing with knowledgeable customers. It assumes, of course, some basic knowledge of botany but, if you are too young to have been taught much of that at school, the basic vocabulary can be picked up quickly enough from the glossaries of terms in plant encyclopaedias.

The genus Narcissus is divided into 13 divisions, depending on the different form of the flower and/or its origins. Division 1 encompasses all those which have trumpets (strictly speaking ‘coronas’) which are at least as long or longer than the outer ring of petals (‘perianth segments’). Division 2 are ‘large-cupped’, which means that the corona is more than one third the length of, but not as long as, the perianth. Division 3 are ‘small-cupped’, Division 4 ‘double’, and so it goes on. A number of the divisions refer to cultivars that can be traced back easily to a particular species; for example, cultivars in Division 6 derive from Narcissus cyclamineus while those in Division 9 from Narcissus poeticus.