Emails and egrets — food for thought

A COUPLE of weeks ago I wrote about daffodils on this page and complained I was finding it difficult to establish whether the wild daffodil was a native Irish species.

When I mention a problem like this I usually get a solution and, sure enough, a reader, who happens also to be a plant scientist, emailed me a few days later.

He said he’d also been curious about the native status of the wild daffodil for some time but my column had prompted him to do more detailed research. He had delved into the genetics of the plant and consulted sources in the University of Murcia in Spain. He’s too good a scientist to be dogmatic about what he discovered but I’m convinced by his conclusion that they are probably native to Spain and Portugal but not to either Britain or Ireland. He believes they were introduced on to large estates at an early date and then naturalised themselves.