Wednesday 5 April 2017

Daffodils: Love, Hate or Tolerate?

Feelings run quite high on this subject and not many are neutral. But you don't have to loathe daffodils to disapprove of people planting the bulbs almost everywhere.


A recent debate online aired various views but mostly strong reservations.

That was followed up by an article in The Guardian expressing a different opinion.

There is of course a native Wild Daffodil that grows in certain parts of Britain with no help from man; that's the variety Wordsworth came across when wandering like a cloud. But what is being referred to here is any one of the many hybrid varieties that have increasingly been planted by people who simply like to see them wherever they go. A line of them has appeared along the side of the road at the dangerous bend by Piper House, planted, presumably, by council employees. There are also planted bulbs at various places on Blacka.

Patrick Barkham speaks up for the daffodils saying we should  concentrate on the invasive species which do significant damage. But there has to be a case for saying where should this stop? Some people like to use wilder parts of the countryside to scatter the ashes of their relatives and even their dogs, accompanied by one or more bulbs. How far should that go? It may be true that they do no harm that can be measured by the usual ecological criteria. The more serious charge against them is that they can overwhelm some of the attractive  but less showy wild flowers, in much the same way as loud amplified sound may drown out quieter music.


The humble but much loved Lesser Celandine is growing here, just coming as an early spring flower, but what most people will see is the imported daff above it:


Two questions demand some thought:
How does this debate fit alongside attitudes to the rhododendron?
and
Would one's view be the same if people began to plant native daffodil bulbs?

And yet another. Did even Wordsworth really not think ten thousand was more than enough?

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