Through Drifts of Wild Daffodils

Once one of the most common wild flowers to be found in the English and Welsh countryside, the wild daffodil suffered a decline in the mid-nineteenth century.  It was, however, grown en masse and harvested by entrepreneurial locals as a cash crop, capitalizing on its popularity.  The decline of this practice combined with agricultural intensification and mismanagement of its habitat probably explains why wild populations have become rarer.

As well as being a national symbol of Wales, it is also the County Flower of Gloucestershire.

It currently survives in patchy populations, often scattered across the western side of  Britain.


Wild Daffodil - Lent Lily

We saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road.  They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness, and the rest tossed and wheeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.
Dorothy Wordsworth



Daffodil drift

 For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
Wm. Wordsworth



Wild daffodils at Stourhead

 "I hate daffodils says wild flower lover on one-man mission to rid countryside of mass-produced bulbs"  read this article here