Charleston Magnolia Garden Club met the second Tuesday, Feb. 14, at the First Presbyterian Church with guest speaker, Becky Fox Matthews, the daffodil lady.
After a luncheon of beef stew, salad and dessert blueberry dump cake provided by Mahaley Hames, Gay Lynn Haynes and Flora Vance, and Morgan Graff’s lovely centerpieces of the very subject Becky had prepared, this accomplished lady schooled us on daffodils.
Becky had a PowerPoint ready for us to watch but technology let her down. However, don’t think for a minute that Becky was stymied over a technology glitch. She launched right into a Q& A on daffodils that depleted every question we could have had.
A Charleston native, and dressed with earrings that were in the shape and color of her beloved daffodils, Becky started her informative exposition on standard daffodils that we see most of the time at old house places. These daffodils are the ones with the prominent cup and six petals. These daffodils are historic and came over to the U.S. with early settlers. No daffodils originated in our nation. The settlers traveling on the ships sewed the seeds into the hems of their hoop skirts to bring the joy we get to see each spring — seeds that take two to three years to develop into bulbs.
She then continued to jonquils, which are usually several headed. Since daffodils are in the narcissus category, jonquils are especially fragrant like the narcissus we force into blooming in the winter, paper whites.
Becky prepared us concerning the care of our in-ground daffodils and any floral arrangement using daffodils. She explained that the green stems left after the bloom should be left until April for maximum care of the future blooms. Also, some ideas on different types and tricking of the daffodil presentation in our arrangements were so welcome.
She named Mesa verde, which is yellowy green, and even rose-colored cups found in some varieties. Her advice about opening some florets by blowing warm breath on the cup of the flower to open it for optimum beauty was surprising as well as putting the plants to be used in the shower for a warm mist to speed up the process. She gave a tip for identifying the different varieties when planting your daffodils: use plastic blinds cut into short strips for sticking in the ground to label the plants.
Receiving a thank you gift of cups with the daffodil motif and an original painting of her favorite flowers, Becky closed her fascinating talk.
Her vast knowledge on this subject from her travels to New Zealand and Ireland, to name a few of her international jaunts and conventions on the flower, could have gone on for more than the time allotted but she wanted to revisit the town and her friends, and return to her home in Brentwood, Tennessee, where she has an acre of beautiful beds of daffodils.
