Description
(Strictly this is Narcissus x incomparabilis)
This is a natural hybrid between between Narcissus poeticus and N. pseudonarcissus. It is perhaps unusual as pseudonarcissus is often early flowering while poeticus is the latest species to flower, by some months. The cross is a very “wide” one (one which has happened between two very different species) and it is hardly surprisingly that the offspring are sterile, though as is often happens when this is the case, the cross is also very vigorous and larger than either parent.
This does well in the UK flowering and increasing well and our stock is raised from an original collection made in the mountains of the Ascoli Piceno, in central Italy many years ago. It has cream to pale yellow petals (the picture is of our exact plants) and a shallow, flared and crispulated darker yellow cup, made on stems around 30cm tall. The foliage is a pleasant, glaucous blue-green.
Described in 1635 by Giovanni Baptista Ferrari in his De Florum Cultura and known, for some reason as “The Great Nonsuch Daffodil” as well as “The Incomparable Daffodil” since, at the time of its first discovery, it was the largest daffodil known (subsequent garden breeding of Frankenstein monsters, has of course long since consigned this idea to the dustbin).
