Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Monocots
Order: Asparagales
Family: Amaryllidaceae
Tribe: Narcisseae
Genus: Narcissus
Species: Many
Common names: Daffodils,
The bulbs are toxic. Skin irritation can be severe.
All Narcissus species have a central trumpet-, bowl-, or disc-shaped corona surrounded by a ring of six floral leaves called the perianth which is united into a tube at the forward edge of the 3-locular ovary. The seeds are black, round and swollen with a hard coat. The three outer segments are sepals,
and the three inner segments are petals. Though the traditional daffodil of folklore, poetry, and field may have a yellow to
golden-yellow color all over, both in the wild species and due to breeding, the perianth and corona may be variously coloured. Breeders have developed some daffodils with double, triple, or ambiguously multiple rows and layers of segments, and several wild species also have known double variants.
All Narcissus varieties contain the alkaloid poison lycorine, mostly in the bulb but also in the leaves.
One of the most common dermatitis problems for florists, "daffodil itch" involves dryness, fissures, scaling, and erythema in the hands, often accompanied
by subungual hyperkeratosis (thickening of the skin beneath the nails). It is blamed on exposure to calcium oxalate in the sap.
A selection of Narcissus cultivars.
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July 09 New Plymouth
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Photographed August New Plymouth
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Thanks to Wikipedia for text and information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
