I'm currently on a heirloom daffodil kick and been looking in vacant lots, roadsides, fields and so on at this time of year to see if there are clumps of abandoned narcissi. I've always noticed them before, of course, but recently I re-discovered that a family heirloom is also a species (N. pseudonarcissus.)
Anywhow, today I was looking across the street from where I was to see if there were any narcissus there. All the houses on that side of the street have been moved or destryed and cleared for a road widening project slated for this summer. I knew the people who lived there and knew they had interesting plants and such and wondered if they had taken their daffs with them. Nope.
I walked over and had a look at the little glints of yellow I saw from across the street and was quite excited to discover a lovely double bi-colored narcissus! So beautiful! Maybe someone will recognize it. I'm checking in books and on the web for photographs. Descriptions alone will just not do.
So I did an emergency bulb rescue. Can't risk possibly losing a rare or hard to find oldie and having something from people I have known since childhood makes it a personal heirloom anywho. So, with shovel in hand, I dug up a few clumps of them "just to be sure" that in case any work started in that area before they went dormant and I could return to get them, at least some would not perish. Some of theclumps and singletons appear to be far enough away from the road that the widening won't bother them, but who knows what else might happen in that space? I would make a great place to park big mean road widening machines and such.....
We're already 4" down from normal rainfall this year and the lot was very dry too, but had that nice black color that well worked gardens can get and is such a change from the usual red clay. A little sandy:good drainage. Not alot of blooms. The bulbs seemed to planted much deeper than is necessary for 7b. But maybe over time, the bulbs have placed themselves where they want to be. (In search of an underground stream? :-Z )
So, I'll keep checking on what goes on in the lot and rush in if the remainder are threatened with extinction.
Robert.
PS The picture doesn't do the flower justice. There is a corolla of six light yellow sepals showing some green on the reverse, with the central partion made up of fairly standard petals in the same lighht yellow interpersed with variously shaped petals with irregularly notched edges, somewhat ruffled, in the classic deep yellow-gold of daffodils. There is no orange in the center as there appears to be. There are some occasional stray bits of green here and there. The blossom pictured measures 3.75 inches from sepal point across to sepal point, the central section about 2.25 inches across.
