This is Weed. And this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on keeping beauty in the garden year-round when we can. Right. And it’s springtime and we’re going to talk daffodils and tulips. Cool. Now, we picked the two of them. First, we’re going to do daffodils, but we decided we’d throw tulips in because they come up at around the same time and they’re bulbs, etc. And they’re planted together quite often.
Yeah. Well, why don’t you give us some background on the Latin name and a little bit about planting the thing and what you’ve learned over the years, working with this species. And then I’ll talk about the history of the plant. Okay. So the Latin name for daffodil is actually narcissus. That’s a genus, right? That is, yeah, that’s a genus. And they’re different species of narcissus.
And so daffodil is one of them. That feels a common name and daffodils are native and they spread and they will come true to color year after year. So that if you plant one in one spot, you know, it’s going to come back the same year and be the same color and put off some offsets. So more, more daffodils will pop up as the years go by and they can be planted in
deciduous forests as long as they bloom before the canopy leaves out. And I planted quite a few of this one type called ice folly, which does bloom really early. There’s a bunch of my yard right now. And so that completes its life cycle before the canopy leaves out. It’s considered a spring ephemeral. Since daffodils are poisonous, farmers tend to plant them underneath fruit trees, trying to deter the wildlife from going over to the fruit tree and eating the fruit.
Let’s see, what else? Because they’re poisonous, they don’t need to be have any special things done while planting. While I can say tulips are definitely eaten by the squirrels and the deer. And I believe the tulip Latin name is tulipa. Like the tulip poplar.
The tulip poplar is Leriodendron tulipaphera. So we’re going to have to look that one up. I’m just going to escape my Latin memory at this point in time. Well, it’s a beautiful spring flower symbolizing resurrection in Easter and all that kind of stuff. But it has a fascinating history. I’m talking about the daffodil now.
The name Narcissus. You can picture some Greek gods staring at himself. And the flower is sort of that beautiful. You want to stare at it all the time. They’re from the Middle East and Europe. The Romans introduced them to the British islands around 300 BC. So this flower has been domesticated for a very long time.
You know, when you’re walking in the woods and all of a sudden, you know, out in a state game land or something like that. And you come across a bunch of daffodils in the spring. You can be pretty sure that that was a homestead.
At one time or another because they planted daffodils around there. And if you do some digging around, you’ll probably find signs, other signs of human activity in that in that area. But, you know, the modern ones were bred in the 1800s and in Britain. And where I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, we call them junk junk junk. And that is the
It’s the genus Narcissus junk old species is a variety. But we used it as a common name growing up in Western Pennsylvania to cover, you know, any of them you saw. You saw growing around. But that, you know, that’s about all I want to say about the history of them and tulips. I really didn’t do my research on tulips. But all I remember about tulips was economics class and Dutch tulip mania bubble that burst in on
- But it was often considered our first speculative bubble because tulips became such a sign of wealth and prestige that people invested. But the reason that the bubble burst is because the tulips did not come true to color the next year. They had ones that were almost black. They were the most valuable ones. They were almost completely black. And actually,
this apparently this one guy traded his house and his business for one bulb. And when he got it, he dropped it on the ground and smashed it because he had the only other one. Right. So instead of having the only two, he had the only one and that was supposed to be so much more valuable. You know, as a collector, I don’t I don’t see that logic. But at any rate, it because it did not come true to color that in successive years, that’s why the whole thing fell
through. Now that color can actually be found very easily these days. It’s the dark, dark purple. Right. And I’ve seen them. Well, real quick, before we sign off, this go over, you plant these things in what October, November, the bulbs, you get the ball from, you know, find them at the hardware store or go to the culture club. Right. I most of mine, I’ve been really lucky in my in my neighborhood,
gardeners like to, when they thin out their bulbs and stuff, they’ll put them in a little box in front of their house with the sign saying free. And that’s where I end up getting most of my dad. Yeah. And Tacoma Horticultural Club has a stand at the fairs and they always sell their bulbs very inexpensively. And so it’s good to get it from those guys. They do like full sun. They like to be well watered.
And you can’t put them in a place that’s too wet or else they’ll rot. Full sun. But otherwise, they’re pretty easy. And as we said, daffodils are the go-to because you don’t have to worry about the squirrel and the deer going after them. That’s right. I have planted tulips in cages back when I was landscaping and that’s a royal pain in the neck. One thing that when we decide to talk about daffodils, my favorite daffodil sighting in the area is on Rock Creek Parkway.
It’s awesome. We biked down there. We biked down to the Cherry Blossoms. Actually, my wife’s going down there today and checking out. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, daffodil hill is not to be missed in DC folks. All right. Let’s do our sign off. One more thing. You want to plant your bulbs three times the diameter of the bulb is the depth. Okay. So with that note, goodbye from Weed & Wack. Join us next week. We’ll be back.
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