Natural Histories

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Nature that has had a profound impact on human culture and society across history.

Nature that has got under our skin and profoundly impacted human culture and society across our history.

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Natural Histories: Daffodils

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Daffodils

BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Daffodils

Brett Westwood explores the role daffodils play in art, medicine, literature and belief.

Brett Westwood explores the role daffodils play in art, medicine, literature and belief. They are harbingers of spring and signs of hope, also of self obsession in Greek mythology.

Wordsworth's famous poem is always in the top 5 most loved poems in English.  His encounter with daffodils in the Lake District has become a romantic expression of our relationship with nature.  They are radiant beauties that bring hope to the heart after the long winter months.  The native flowers are delicate and small, unlike the cultivated, rather brash varieties that adorn roadside verges and roundabouts, creating much daffodil snobbery.  Daffodils are the national flower of Wales, though only since the 19th Century, promoted by Lloyd George who thought them more attractive than leeks.  Attractiveness though led them to be associated with vanity, the Greek Narcissus (daffodils in Latin: narcissus) fell in love with his own reflection and pined away.  Their appearance in Lent gives them the name Lenten Lilly and associated with resurrection, but in Eastern cultures it is the flower of wealth and good fortune.  It has been used throughout history as a medicine, despite being toxic.  Today it is grown extensively in Wales as its bulb contains galantamine, a drug used in the treatment of Alzheimer's.  Whatever way you look at daffodils they are quintessentially a part of human cultures wherever it grows and can be considered the flower that brightens Britain after long, cold winters.

Producer : Sarah Pitt

Archive Producer : Andrew Dawes

Revised Repeat : First Broadcast BBC Radio 4; 28th August 2015

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