Very early large trumpet daffodil

Identification required

My Weekly whim

I need to enroll my readers today to identify this very early daffodil. Typical of me I bought it from Parkers in 2001 and instantly forgot its name. I seem to remember that it was an old commercial cut flower variety and at the time I feared it might be vulgar and blousy.

It is my very favourite now and comes into flower ridiculously early. This year it came into magnificent flower in the third week in January and although now a little bedraggled eight weeks later the flowers are still there. This Winter was wet and warm. A commercial cut flower variety would tend to have a low cold requirement to enable early cutting. I chose to plant it because it would give me an early start to my daffodil season. It never fails me. It flowers profusely and without support withstands wind and snow.

By careful choice of early, mid season and late varieties you can have narcissus in flower in the garden right through from January until early May. Each year I achieve more than four months succession.

Note that whilst ‘going over’ a later cultivar at the back is just emerging

No, this isn’t my mystery variety - although I have forgot its name too! Pictured last year, my featured variety is behind this later one and if Brenda comes into the garden it might get dead headed

A much later variety pictured in mid May

Early narcissi seem to last longer because it is colder and perhaps because they fail to achieve pollination (certain plant species set seed as soon as they are pollinated).

If you also have a similar continuity, please explain to your husband – if he is the one who cuts your lawn - that they must not all be mowed back at the same time!

Daffodils and other narcissus are, of the popular bulbs, the ones you go for if your soil is wet in Winter. They like to be moist and are remarkably tolerant to wet places. My mystery variety is planted as clumps in the lawn where the water table is sometimes high. In its first three weeks above ground this year it was standing in water. It dried up a little and without complaint it continued to thrive. Last week we had another series of heavy downpours and it was flooded again. This time it has drained quite quickly and all the succeeding varieties of narcissus are also doing fine.

It was pretty wet in January

The wet hardly held up their progress

Rather bedraggled at the end of their season (in the second wet spell)

Links to my previous daffodil posts

In 2013 I followed my daffodils from emergence to final cutting down

It’s my favourite variety and has been undisturbed for fifteen years

But what's its name?