Narcissi - peach swirl and popeye

Peach Swirl narcissi.  It not only looks like eye yolk, the centre even has that slightly velvety look the same

Back at the rear end of November I invested in a whole barrowful of narcissi bulbs.  I think the long miserable winter got to me and so when it finally ended, I wanted it to end in an explosion of yellow and white frills.  I was also very taken with some fabulous narcissi bulbs the mother grew last year that were little complicated bundles of layers.  I went for several different varieties, large and ruffley, small and simple, singles and multiple headed.  I thought now they are all flowered I would run through them and today I am looking at the two biggest.

Ruffle central

Peach Swirl popped out first.  And boy did it pop.  This is one big flowered narcissi.  The outside petals  are crisp white while the middles are the most beautiful egg yolk orange yellow.  I just love this orange shade, and it completely makes the flower.  This is definitely what would classify as a 'show-stopper' among the narcissi family.  After the misery of winter these really were a feast for the eyes.

You can't deny it has body

However they burst forth just as England experienced a heat wave, frying the petals and making them wilt faster than they would usually have, and I disappeared off on holiday for a couple of days so I didn't get to enjoy them as much as I had hoped.

While I often enjoy a very simply constructed flower, I also enjoy it when flowers have a really complicated construction, and these certainly ticked that box. A ring of spiked white petals intersect the coloured centre, making them very dynamic and three dimensional.  Essentially its a nice flower, Im gilding the lilly in descriptive terms, you can see the pictures as well as I can.

Popeye narcissi, less dramatic but still lovely

The second variety is Popeye.  Both varieties bloomed at much the same and initially they looked rather similar.  I wondered to myself why I would have plumped for two such similar specimens, but then the peach swirls darkened and they stopped looking so alike.

Popeye has far less flamboyance and shape than peach swirl, restricting its ruffles to within its yellow trumpet and leaving a simple set of petals behind.  If Im totally honest, I prefer the structure of a good peach swirl myself, but popeye has its charms too.  They yellow trumpet is very zingy, and is constructed from tightly packed petals, resembling rolled up layers of tissue paper.

If I was to recommend one of the two, I would choose peach swirl, I prefer the colour and just think they are more interesting flowers, but anybody in the market for large flowered narcissi would enjoy either of these two delights in my opinion.  I will definitely attempt to keep the bulbs for next year.