Daffodil breeding - first attempt

I have done a lot of vegetable breeding over the years.  I have developed some excellent new varieties of tomatoes, potato, corn, berries, herbs, and other edible things.  To a far lesser extent I have dabbled in breeding of ornamental plants.  

One of my first efforts at breeding daffodils is below.  Unlike vegetables, growing from seed is tricky, but breeding spring flowering bulbs does not take too long.  

To create a new variety of daffodils you do not have to spend years and produce/cull many generations (usually 7 to 10) to stabilise the line.  On the other hand, once you have a new variety of daffodil that you like, the bulbs are divided, bulbs produce exact genetic clones, and you have new variety.  The hardest part is getting daffodil seeds, and germinating them into seedlings.

My new daffodil

Seed grown daffodil

This daffodil variety produces small flowers that are highly fragrant.  The numbers of flowers per stem vary a bit with 8 or 9 being most common.  They seem rather vigorous, and happily divide in my garden.  Which I like!

Not every bulb produces a flower stem every year, I think that is pretty normal for daffodils.  Larger bulbs produce flowers, smaller bulbs don't.  I think if I gave them better soil and less competition I would probably get more flowers and more bulb division, but I don't have the space for such things.  Even with poor soil and a lot of competition they are performing well.

This daffodil makes an excellent cut flower.  They have multiple fragrant blooms per stem.  Each cluster lasts a long time in a vase.  Each flower is small, around 3cm, the stems grow to around 40cm tall, they could probably be taller or shorter depending on the conditions.

They produce flowers early this year, opening the first few days of August.  This year winter has been mild, so they may open a little later on a cold year.  Even if they open later they are still one of the first daffodils to bloom in my garden.

Each flower is about 3cm

Stems are about 40cm long

The bulbs do divide quickly so it should not take too long to build up numbers of these daffodils.  

Being seed grown they are genetically different from any other variety around.  I need to look around and see if they are noticeably different from other varieties.  If they are I need to name them.

If I ever have enough to sell I will list them on my for sale page when the bulbs are dormant.