February Botanical Comments...

The countdown begins. Spring starts next month and that is none too soon.

The few plants that are starting to appear just now are hardly high on anyone's list of favorites, save the jonquils or daffodils that are showing up to decorate old fence lines and unkempt fields. Otherwise it's just better perhaps to appreciate the fact that winter rains are greening the hillsides and not look too hard to notice that most of the new growth is probably due to greening non natives! Those pretty daffodils that are showing up along old fence lines and clustered in untended fields are not native plants in California, but we can still appreciate them and their story...

There are three general names associated with this flower: Narcissus, daffodil, and jonquil. In fact Narcissus is the genus, and daffodils are in fact jonquils, so all three names apply. I had thought that jonquil was the name of the yellow and white flowers while daffodils were the yellow ones? Not the case. In fact more references seem to refer to the all-yellow variety of Narcissus as jonquils. The yellow daffs that appear in this area are Narcissus pseudonarcissusClick for Calflora records..., an interesting name that says they are what they are (Narcissus) but also not (pseudo) Narcissus!

There are interesting back stories to all three names:

The Narcissus name is literally the stuff of legends; it is easy to find references to the name coming from a Greek myth about a hunter who was so pleased with his beauty that he stared at his reflection in the water, eventually falling in and drowning, or being so self-obsessed that he forgets to eat and dies, and of course we see this as the root of the adjective narcissistic. But there is much more to the story. Try this excerpt from the original version:

"And these would have upraised his funeral pyre, and waved the flaming torch, and made his bier; but as they turned their eyes where he had been, alas he was not there! And in his body's place a sweet flower grew, golden and white, the white around the gold."

If this makes you curious, take a few minutes and read the story of Narcissus and Echo in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The word narcissus also derives from the Greek word narke which means numbness. Narcotic is also derived from this root word; the association of narke with narcissus is due to the narcotic effects of the bulbs which contain a paralyzing alkaloid. Even now, Calfora records list contact dermatitis as a "feature" of handling the bulbs.

The name daffodil comes from asphodel, which in Dutch would be "De aspfodel". As they are today, the Dutch have long been prolific bulb merchants, and It wouldn't have taken long for that phrase to get garbled into daffodil as the bulbs were traded into new parts of the world.

Daffodil bulbs are being used to produce the chemical galantamine, a drug used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease!

The name jonquil is from French jonquille, from Spanish junquillo, diminutive of junco (reed(, from Latin juncus. And of course juncus continues as a name for a genus of rushes.

Now back to the flowers...

My main interest in them (past the iconic image of Spring) is that interesting flower shape! A narrow hypanthium, three petals and three tepals, and the cup-like corona. Note: if this is a new term, as it was for me, it is helpful to know that a corona (also called a crown) is "An inner appendage to a petal or a corolla, often forming a special cup, as in the daffodil and jonquil." Live and learn.

Then there's this odd bit: "Daffodil flowers extend laterally from the long axes of their stems; as a result, wind on a flower exerts torsional as well as flexural stress on the stem. Stems respond by twisting, and thus flowers reorient to face downwind in moderate winds, in the process reducing their drag! " -- American Journal of Botany

So go get some daffodils, put them in a vase in your house, and think about these odd bits of Narcissusl trivia.

Enough about Narcissus! Are You Up for a Road Trip?

Why not go a little crazy and plan a trip to Death Valley? The fact that December's rain total was almost an inch (typical annual average is only about 1.5 inches!) means that it could be a really good bloom this year, and that bloom starts in February in the lowest areas.

It takes about eight hours to get to Stovepipe Wells, and in the area between there and Furnace Creek or Badwater you would probably find a decent display of color.

Could you stand some 75° weather? Check the Death Valley Morning Report (the link pops up a PDF) and see what you think? Honestly, this is always a fun weekend trip, and if you get there and think nothing is blooming yet, park the car and go for walk. You will find scores of tine flowers that simply don't create carpets of color. The lilac sunbonnet (Langloisia sp.) shown at right, is maybe a half-inch flower that makes a great belly flower. There are many more that are equally under whelming but beautiful to drop down and inspect.

Of course Death Valley just gets better as March comes on, and probably the blooms are finished by April, leaving you the need to look at higher elevations. It's a really worthwhile trip, and I'm serious when I suggest it as February consideration.

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