Beware! Daffodil Police!!

The Daffodil Police at Work

The 1998 daffodil reclassification by the Royal Horticulture Society took some regrettable actions. Not only did they take the N. bulbocodium hybrids that we all know as miniatures and reclassify them as division 10 standard daffodils, they also arbitrarily reclassified many of the other daffodils to meet some sort of subjective "rule" that doesn't make common sense.

Now, the bulbocodium, a cute little flower that doesn't even look like a daffodil, really rocked the boat. We took this little innocent flower that we all knew as a miniature and classified them as standards and the show rule book clearly states you can't show miniatures as standards. What's the ruling here, daffodil police? Miniature? or Standard?

Secondly, there are hardly enough of the new division 10 bulbocodium hybrids to justify a separate divisional classification. Someone must have done a real hard sales job like the Clinton White House does ever time they want to put out a new spending bill and make it look like a tax cut to the public. My theory is that because the bulbocodium hybrids were not species narcissus, the daffodil police decided that they had to have a division of their own; I would have put them in division 12, 'Other Daffodils', where they belong - and were.

Other Changes As if they could not let well-enough alone, they took the flower loved by many gardeners for centuries, commonly know as 'Twin Sisters', or 'April Beauty', which was also called N. biflorus in the old classification and changed them to N. medioluteus without a word, and the term N. biflorus just disappeared. Probably shipped off to the "Tower of London." I want my "Twin Sisters" back and keep Anne Boleyn's "blade" in it's scabbard.

I was not so thrilled about the treatment of the 'Tenby' daffodil either, N. obvallaris. It was declared to be no longer a subspecies of N. pseudonarcissus, and moved to its own section. That made it hard to find in the new register. Note to daffodil police, I found it anyway. How far is too far, may I ask?

The same thing happened in Division 7, formally Jonquilla hybrids. They were reclassified as Jonquilla and Apodanthi, probably just because they figured out that I couldn't spell Apondanthi. It also flies in the face of common sense as, to many, the term jonquil means daffodil, and now they are throwing apondanthi into the soup. Who is going to be driving down the road and when they see yellow flowers on the side of the road yell out in excitement, "look, Jonquilla and Apondanthi?"

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