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On Joy and Jonquils

© Renie Burghardt

What is joy? Joy is holding your baby for the very first time, right after giving birth to her/him. Joy is watching a beautiful sunrise, and looking forward to another day coming upon you. Another day to live! Joy, to me, is seeing, listening, smelling, hearing all the interesting and beautiful sights and sounds this place, these woods where I live, offer. Joy is also watching a beautiful sunset, and going to bed with a feeling of peace and calm; a feeling that all is well in your world. Joy is a sense of well being, a gift from God. Joy is enthusiasm for something, cheerfulness, and a gladness to be alive.

"Delight yourself in the Lord
And he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37

And joy is seeing the jonquils open their dainty clusters of golden blossoms, after their green shoots had been above ground for the past two months already. Finally, they are blooming; can spring be far behind? Seeing the jonquils, I'm immediately reminded of Wordsworth's poem about daffodils:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Those daffodils in Wordsworth's poem, fluttering and dancing in the breeze are expressing joy! And although he called them daffodils, they were probably jonquils. Well, okay, they were daffodils. What's in a name?

Are jonquils daffodils? Or are daffodils a different flower? Well, both jonquils and daffodils are members of the Narcissus family. But the true jonquils (Narcissus jonquilla) have round, rush-like leaves and small, fragrant early blooming clusters of yellow blossoms. Daffodils, on the other hand, have large, normally yellow, single trumpet flowers. All jonquils are daffodils, but not all daffodils are jonquils!

Jonquils are the most fragrant of the Narcissus species. The cultivation of jonquils goes far back. Roman soldiers introduced the plant into England during the early years of the Christian era. They say Queen Anne loved jonquils so much that she wove patterns of jonquil blossoms into much of her delicate needlework. And her love of jonquils inspired her to establish Kensington Palace Gardens, the first public gardens in England.

The Colonists introduced both the multiple-flowered jonquils and the single flowered daffodils to America. But Narcissus grows wild in southwestern Europe from Spain and Portugal up to France and Great Britain, over to Switzerland and Austria, and back down to Greece and Italy. From these wild plants breeders have developed more than 25,000 daffodil varieties. And they are easy to grow. You just stick the bulbs in the ground, and they will come up in late winter, year after year after year. They seem to go on forever.