Quezi

Daffodil knot (photo by Roger Browne - CC-BY)

It’s an odd custom. Some gardeners will fastidiously tie all their daffodil leaves into knots at the end of the flowering season. What gives? Actually, the purpose served by the knots is more social than horticultural.

Daffodils burst into bloom each April (or October south of the equator). The petals then fall off and, provided the flowers were pollinated, the seeds start to swell up. At this point the gardener can do one of two things: either leave the seeds to grow, or pick them off.

If you leave the seeds, they’ll ripen and be dispersed, and some of them will start growing into new daffodils. In this way, the daffodils become naturalised. But growing a seed takes a lot of the plant’s energy, and next year’s flowers may be smaller. Therefore many gardeners prefer to pick off the seeds before they swell up. The carbohydrates produced by the leaves as they photosynthesize will then be stored in the bulb to provide energy for the following year’s flowers, instead of going into the seeds.

That brings a dilemma to the gardener, because during that month or two the leaves will collapse and discolor. How unkept it will make the garden appear! Heaven forbid that the neighbors would think that the garden was being neglected.

So the gardener carefully ties each clump of leaves into a simple overhand knot. The visual effect can be quite absurd, and yet it sends a loud message which says “I’ve put a lot of work into this garden. As you can see, I’m not neglecting these daffodils. If you don’t understand what’s going on, then I must be a better gardener than you.”

Ah, suburban competitive gardening at its best! I just leave my daffodils au naturel until the end of May, then mow what’s left of them. Works for me.