Nature table: Daffodils

There are hundreds of cultivated varieties of this familiar flower and most of them bloom in March.

After the petals fall, capsules of seed form at their base, but growing daffodils from seed is a tricky and long drawn out business and they are usually propagated by lifting and dividing clumps of underground bulbs.

They often appear to be growing wild in woods, along river banks or on road verges but are almost certainly garden escapes. Wild daffodils are found in woodlands across Europe but in declining numbers. It’s not clear if they’re an Irish native species. The evidence has been obscured by garden escapes. The most likely answer is that, although they are a rare native plant in England and Wales, they are not native to Ireland. One of the reasons they survive so well as a feral plant is that they are quite poisonous. The toxin protects them against grazing animals and there have been human fatalities, mostly of people who ate the bulbs thinking they were onions