I was surprised this afternoon to spot a daffodil that wasn’t one of the typical autumn blooming daffodils. It is John Hunter’s JAH 23/88 4W-W ((Rosewynne x Gay Challenger) x N. viridiflorus). It has a rather long neck and would be about 14 cm tall if it stood straight up. The perianth segments have a green tinge, and the perianth is about 6 to 7 cm in diameter. There are some short coronal segments that look yellow with a green cast. If I look really hard, I think I see something that might be an anther deep down in the corona. John gave me a bulb in 2000. There is a second bud coming up (which you see behind the 1 to 2 centimeter marks on the ruler), and I see a leaf coming up that isn’t near the two flowers, so there are probably three bulbs now. Normally, I set the pot out in November when the first winter rains start, and flowering has been unreliable. This year, I set the pot out in October and started watering regularly. The neighborhood cats have a bad habit of digging in pots of dry soil but generally leave damp soil alone. It appears that this hybrid still has very strong N. viridiflorus habits and wants to flower in the autumn after the autumn rains which I provided artificially this year.
Kirby Fong