The narcissus

It fills me with a sense of wonder to think a flower so entrenched in our collectivepsyche could be available to us in such a wild abundance of variations, and from afairly limited gene pool of just fifty species. Of course the color palette is limited:white, cream, all shades of yellow, orange, peach toward—but not quite at—true pink,with the occasional green or red eye. (My comment about peach and pink will ignitea blaze of protest from the daffodil cognoscenti. I am ready for it. Being a clematiscollector myself, I know what misstating and misunderstanding colors is all about,blue in clematis being a relative thing.)Let us be clear: all daffodils and all jonquils are in the genus Narcissus.