This is the famous miniature that packs more color for its size than any other. Well-named Jetfire sizzles with deep yellow petals and a corona that ranges from orange to red. The swept-back outer petals indicates its parentage: That look is the hallmark of the wild species,
Narcissus cyclamineus, from which Jetfire has been hybridized.
Naturalizing Daffodils. Probably nothing in the gardening world is more foolproof and more rewarding than 'naturalizing' daffodils. Because unlike most other garden flowers, these fantastic plants are super-easy to plant in fall, they don't care about soil, as long as it's well-drained, and they'll bloom beautifully for you with absolutely no work every spring after you plant them. Best of all, daffodils increase over the years, each bulb developing into a blooming clump. All you have to do is pick the spots. The one thing to remember is that you won't be able to mow that area until the tops die down. Everything else takes care of itself. In a new or established wildflower meadow, the wildflower plants grow up around the daffodils hiding the fading foliage, so there's no work to do. And if you're planting wildflower seed, what could be easier that to pop in the bulbs when you have the ground already turned?
About the Wild Daffodils. Like wild tulips which are more the size of crocus, most of the wild daffodils are tiny too. They're generally small wildflowers that have been hybridized by the Dutch into the big tall beauties we know today.
Unlike tulips which are native to Central Asia, daffodils are European wildflowers, native to areas of France, Spain and Portugal.
Holland is not the ancestral home of any bulb flowers. But it's the home of almost all the hybrids, since the Dutch hybridizers have not only created thousands of new flowers gardeners love, they've developed a huge national industry that supplies bulbs to gardeners worldwide.
To a wildgardener, of course, the original un-hybridized species (and their close hybrids) are all interesting, and even better, they're all dependably perennial. Plant them once, and they're there forever. Unlike the hybrids which develop bigger and bigger clumps each year, and have to be divided every few seasons for good bloom, the wild species simply spread, like they do in the wild. So there is absolutely no maintenance for the wild bulbs, once you get them established.
Here are the major wild species:
Narcissus tazetta
Narcissus triandrus
Narcissus pseudonarcissus
Narcissis jonquilla
Narcissus poeticus recurvus
Narcissus clyclamineus
