A Strange Daffodil Season

Without a doubt, this was the strangest daffodil season I can remember. It began early, in February, and we never had a heavy frost, or even a cold spell, to slow things down. As I write this on May 1, there are no daffodils left to bloom in my garden. Usually I can find blooms to mid-May and later. Our local daffodil group decided to have a "late" show this year, in addition to one at the regular time, and most of the blooms on display on April 29 came out of our refrigerators! Some blooms had been refrigerated for 2-1/2 weeks. Fortunately, friends came from further north and east, and so we had a nice display for the public coming to the show.

I did a little traveling in late March with some daffodil friends, expecting to see most of my own daffodils after I returned home. We flew in to San Francisco, and then traveled up the coast visiting daffodil shows and daffodil growers, with our final destination being the national convention of The American Daffodil Society in Portland Oregon. The convention was designated a World Daffodil Convention, and was hosted by the Oregon Daffodil Society. If you have a favorite flower, or special hobby interest, joining the national society for that flower or hobby can be lots of fun. You not only learn about your hobby, but you meet other people who share your interest, and you can make life-long friends.

We stopped at Nancy Wilson's garden in Garberville, California. Nancy grows and sells miniature daffodils. Then we stopped in at Norman Thompson's mountaintop garden outside of Kneeland, California. Norman and his wife, Lori, grow thousands of daffodils just for their own pleasure. The daffodils had an ethereal beauty about them in the morning fog. In his spare time, Norman has also built his own small helicopter. He says it's great for going to secluded beaches.

Another person we visited on our trip was Walter Blom, of Albany, Oregon. Walter is retired now, but is still working with daffodils. He is segregating the various forms of N. rupicola. He has small ones, very small ones, some with prostrate leaves, some with upright leaves all growing happily in his greenhouse. Hopefully these will one day be made available to gardeners. Walter has also been working with N. bulbocodium. N. bulbocodium is a diploid, but Walter has developed some hexaploids. You can see the difference in size and number of bloom scapes in the accompanying photo. The pot with normal-sized flowers is on the left, and the pot with the hexaploids is on the right. I thought these were amazing plants!

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