The story of Narcissus, a vain Greek demigod, and how the daffodil sent 12 children to the hospital.

Painting of the greek demigod Narcissus, looking at his own reflection, by Michelangelo Caravaggio, 1594-1596

At around 2:30 in the afternoon, May 1st 2009, the fifth graders at Gorseland Primary School in Suffolk England inexplicably began vomiting. A medical team was dispatched and arrived to find 12 of the 30 students violently ill. They were curried by ambulance to Ipswich Hospital and, after appropriate resuscitation, recovered uneventfully. Earlier that morning the class had dug onion bulbs from their school garden, brought them to the kitchen, and boiled them to make soup. Ten minutes into the feast, nine year old Abby Josey began noticing stomach pains. Within the hour, a number of students were doubled over trash cans and toilets. Amidst the onions, it turns out, one student had mistakenly harvested (and boiled) a daffodil bulb.

Daffodils are a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, which includes onions and chives, Amaryllis, and Snowdrops. All Narcissus species contain the alkaloid poison lycorine, a toxic crystalline alkaloid known to inhibit protein synthesis. Lycorine provides protection for the plant through its toxicity to mammals, as the children from Gorseland regrettably worked out.

The genus Narcissus arose some time in the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene epochs (in other words, about 20 million years ago) on the Iberian peninsula and adjacent areas of southwest Europe. They were introduced formally into gardens around 300 BC; they are listed and described in Theophrastus’ Enquiry into Plants. Regarding etymology, the most obvious conclusion is that the genus name came from the self-obsessed Greek Narcissus, who so loved his own visage that he fell into a pool and drowned. Many sources will suggest as much. In fact, however, there is “no clarity on whether the flower is named for the myth or the myth for the flower, or if there is any true connection at all.” Pliny the Elder wrote that the plant was named for its intoxicating fragrance, as in a narcotic, not the youth. As he put it: “I grow numb,” from the Greek narkē meaning numbness or stupor.

Daffodil is even more confusing, with many references claiming it is derived from the Dutch, ‘affo dyle’ or ‘that which cometh early’. A thorough search through various Dutch, Danish and Welsh to English translators, however, will reveal no such words or phrase. “That which cometh early”, “Arriving early”, “coming early” or any other permutation translates to something more like “dat wat vroeg komt.” The word “affo” in Dutch, as far as I can find, doesn’t exist. I recently spoke with a Dutch friend who confirmed that no such words exist in her language. More convincingly, the provenance has been proposed as from asphodel, a flower from another genus entirely, but that grew in a similar region.

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

— WILLIAM WORDSWORTH