Q: We moved some “buttercups,” as my mother-in-law used to call them, from the family farm in Tennessee to our home in Kennesaw. We have never seen one like this! We’d love to know what it might be.

A: Jaydee Ager, CEO of the Georgia Daffodil Society says:

This is an old daffodil that is prone to look like this (I’ve heard it called ‘Green Mop’ by country folks).

Sara Van Beck, Past President of The Georgia Daffodil Society, says:

What you have is ‘Telamonius Plenus’, aka ‘Van Sion’. It is a very old flower in American gardens. For all its unattractiveness, it’s about one of the toughest daffodils going; it grows as far south as Tallahassee. It is a wild sport double, domesticated at least by the early 1600’s. It was grown in the London garden of the Dutchman Van Sion (hence the secondary name). In some pristine settings in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee it can be seen in its ideal form, with the perianth whole and the doubling all confined to the trumpet. It’s called the Easter Flower there.

Further notes from Walter: The greening is not always present but seems to be associated with warm weather when the flower opens.

see Telamonius Plenus

daffodil ‘Van Sion’