The Humble Daffodil

The daffodil, it seems, originated in Portugal, Spain and the southern coast of France, not Wales. But the daffodil is cheap and cheerful and only last for a couple of weeks, which makes it eminently suitable as our national emblem.

The name for daffodil in Welsh (cenhinen Bedr) translates as Peter's Leek. The word for leek is cenhinen. This allows plenty of scope for conjecture and confusion. I might as well add to it.

Daffodils are also known as Lent Lilies, Easter Lilies, Daffys, Narcissus and by the Latin name Narcissus Pseudonarcissus.

Narcissus were first written about by the Greek Theophrastus around 300BC in his Enquiry into Plants. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a young man who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water and was turned into a flower by the gods.

Medieval Arabs apparently used the juice of wild daffodils as a cure for baldness. I have no idea if it works. It is said that Roman soldiers carried daffodils with them to eat if they should be mortally wounded in battle, in order to hasten their journey to the underworld.

Mohammed wrote: "He that has two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for some flowers of the Narcissus, for bread is food for the body, but Narcissus is food of the soul."

Mercifully, the Welsh are only encouraged to wear daffodils in their buttonholes on 1st March. And the type of Welshmen who have buttonholes sometimes actually wear them!

The daffodil became a popular Welsh symbol in the 19th century. Lloyd George, feeling that leeks were a bit dull and unattractive, used the daffodil to symbolise Wales at the 1911 Investiture of Edward Windsor, the soon-to-be Nazi sympathiser who, having been crowned Edward VIII of England, got sacked for marry an American divorcee.

I have no idea why you need a plant as a symbol for a country. Is it any wonder nationalists prefer to use the rather more noble and powerful, not to mention scarily Nazi-looking, symbol of the white eagle of Snowdonia?

What else do you need to know? There are about 50 species of daffodils, and many thousands of named cultivars and hybrids of garden origin. In fact, the Royal Horticultural Society International Daffodil Register lists more than 26,400 named daffodils.

CYMRAEG – ENGLISH