OK it's back! Rather like the flowers portrayed it has popped up again in the early Spring having died back last autumn. Unfortunately another temporary home until I can work out how to make it pay for its own server space and domain name (donations and suggestions welcome ;) Anyone is welcome to link to this page but please let me know so that I can inform you if it moves.

"Did you have a good time on holiday?" people ask. If you call six flights and over two thousand miles driving in a fortnight a good time then yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like to think of them more as expeditions than holidays. Anyway, when I looked last year there were no pictures of narcissus species on the web that google could find so I thought it was about time that I redressed the balance. Now I see that I'm not the only one and there are a few sites with references and/or images of narcissi which I shall be linking to very soon.

The botanical name of the genus, Narcissus, is considered to be derived, not as is often said, from the name of the classical youth who met with his death through vainly trying to embrace his image reflected in a clear stream, but from the Greek word narkao (to benumb), on account of the narcotic properties which the plant possesses. Pliny describes it as Narce narcissum dictum ,non a fabuloso puero , 'named Narcissus from Narce , not from the fabulous boy.'(taken from botanical.com)

Comments are welcomed (anyone care to help me out with botanical names of some of the other flowers at the end of the gallery?). I have named the plants according to their most recent agreed names but have not determined variants and subspecies. I hope to add more details about each of the pictures at some point. The images have been heavily compressed to keep download times short. Should you want to use any images, I have high resolution versions available.

Some other sites you may wish to visit:

Photos © 2002 Dan Blanchard
wildnarcissus@dsl.pipex.com