Daffodils: Irish season, meaning and the sap problem

Daffodils poison the other flowers in the vase. That is not a figure of speech: a cut daffodil stem leaks a sap that blocks the water-conducting tissue of tulips, roses and freesias, and a mixed bunch put together straight from the shop can lose half its life to it. The fix takes six hours and no effort. Stand the daffodils in their own jug of water first, then move them across without cutting them again.

Almost nobody selling mixed spring bunches mentions this, and it is the reason so many of them fail early.

What daffodils mean

New beginnings, rebirth and the return of spring, which is as direct as flower meanings get: the daffodil comes up when nothing else does. The Victorian language of flowers gave it regard and unrequited love, from the Narcissus myth, and that reading has not survived into general use.

Ireland has its own layer. Daffodil Day, run by the Irish Cancer Society on the fourth Friday of March, has made the daffodil the national fundraising flower, and a pinned paper daffodil in March means one specific thing to everybody in the country. In Wales the flower belongs to St David's Day on 1 March, which is why so many British daffodil references land in early spring.

The daffodil is also tied to the Irish sense of when spring starts. St Brigid's Day on 1 February opens the season in the old calendar, and the flower follows a few weeks behind it rather than arriving on cue.

Season in Ireland

Ireland is a real daffodil country. Narcissus bulbs are grown commercially here for export, and field crops in Cork, Wexford and north County Dublin supply cut stems to Irish shops from late February through April. Forced stems appear from January.

This is one of the very few flowers where buying Irish is the default rather than an effort, and where the price reflects it: a bunch of Irish daffodils in March costs a couple of euro. Compare that with what an imported rose costs in February and the seasonal argument makes itself.

Irish Mother's Day falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which puts it in March every year, in the middle of the daffodil season. There is more on what else is out in Irish flowers in season.

When to send them, and when not to

Daffodils suit a spring gesture: a get well, a thank you, a new house, a small kindness. They are cheap enough that a weekly bunch through March costs less than one delivered bouquet, and the modesty of the flower is part of what it says.

Do not send them for a formal occasion, and do not send them for sympathy. They are too bright and too short-lived for a week of visitors, and the association with fundraising sits oddly at a funeral.

Do not send them to a house with a cat that chews plants, and never leave the vase water where an animal can drink it.

Care

Buy them in bud, at the stage growers call goose-neck, where the bud has bent over and the colour is just showing. They open in a day and you gain three.

Cut straight across rather than on a slant, and only once. Every fresh cut releases more sap.

Condition them alone for six hours in shallow cool water. If they are going into a mixed vase, move them without re-cutting. If they are going in on their own, none of this matters.

Skip the flower food and use plain cool water. Keep the vase shallow, out of the sun, and in a cool room, and expect six days. Warmth is what shortens them: a daffodil in a hall lasts nearly twice as long as one over a radiator.