If I had to pick a favorite flower, I think it would be the daffodil. Does that make me a narcissist?

Narcissus is a fascinating genus of plants.

You wouldn’t think that daffodils would be so diverse. After all, they only come in a limited palette of yellow, orange, and white, and the form that makes a daffodil a daffodil (a “perianth” of petals surrounding a cup-shaped “corona”) seems pretty standard. Yet the species that have naturally arisen and the distinctions that breeders have teased out of the daffodil gene pool reveal the endlessly creative riffs this flower can play on that simple formula.

I’ve never been one for collecting certain genera of plants, but flipping through daffodil catalogs makes me want to start.

February Gold’ is usually the first daffodil to bloom that I know of. There are probably others that are earlier, but this is the most popular extra-early daff, and to me it signals the beginning of spring, no matter what the calendar says. During this unseasonably warm year in Portland, I first saw it blooming on January 30 in a warm, south-facing, gravelly bed. It usually starts the week of March 8 in Cincinnati (Zone 6).

As the flower ages, February Gold’s perianth fades to a soft primrose, while the corona stays a brassy yellow. Its daddy is N. cyclamineus, which has a long snout and petals swept back like the long ears of a hound dog sticking his head out the car window, and you can see a bit of a resemblance. This is an heirloom variety from 1923.