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Daffodils Fall Indications - Harbingers of Spring

© Clay Higgins

Daffodils Fall Indications - Harbingers of Spring

The fairy tail is that daffodils bloom brightly in the spring. However, the truth of the matter is that "daffoholics" like myself and, if I may speak for the American Daffodil Society, most of them too, get all excited about the daffodil foliage that appears in the fall. We, better than the rest of the world, know that daffodil fall indications are the real harbingers of spring.

This past Saturday when the temperature was ranging from 24 degrees at night to a high or 36 degrees during the day, I was out "just wondering around" my garden beds and being totally amazed at the daffodil foliage that was showing. In my front "peanut" bed in the rock-garden I found that a small drift of N. jonquilla jonquilla was in full foliage, and not far from it was the foliage of 'Golden Bells' a member of the N. bulbocodium family.

As I strolled around the garden, I found other members of the N. bulbocodium family had put up foliage, along with N. obvarallis the 'Tenby' daffodil. It didn't take long to find that 'Avalanche' and 'Castanets' from the N. tazetta family were also putting up a showing. However, most of the daffodils were still asleep in their well mulched beds.

After I decided to go back into the house, I wondered along my newly redesigned front walkway, and seeing a left over candy wrapper from visiting rugrat grandchildren during the recent Thanksgiving Holiday lying on the mulch, I decided to pick it up. Just as I started to step off the walk, green foliage tips poking out of the mulch greeted me. I stopped just in time to keep from planting my big size 13 extra wide shoe right on top of 'Pipit' 7YYW-WWY, one of my best reverse bicolor jonquils. As I looked around, I found another dozen sets of foliage coming up in that one "drift" of daffodils. Closer examination also showed that 'Intrique' 7Y-W, another reverse bicolor jonquil was also breaking the ground on the opposite side of the sidewalk. Both of these daffodils are usually amongst my late daffodils, and I'm just a little surprised to see them putting in an appearance in the fall.

Maybe I'm just easy to please, but it makes me feel real good to know that these daffodils survived the "basal rot" threat that always comes with summer heat and rain. No I'm not worried about the daffodils coming up in the fall. The winter cold will take the foliage, but next spring the daffodils will put up a little foliage, and will bloom. If the foliage survives the winter, it may have dead ends on the tips next spring, but with the glorious bloom, I'll forgive that.

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