Daffodils: The Poetic Icon that Means Booming Business for Britain

Suzanne explores the British adoration of the yellow, trumpet-like, optimistic daffodil, the harbinger of spring. The evocative words of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, poetry and prose, bracket this episode, in which we discover that daffodils are also about economics. The UK cultivates 90% of the global daffodil supply. The numbers are staggering: hundreds of millions of flowers are grown annually and must all be harvested by hand. But how? We also meet a bunch of Victorian daffodil obsessives, from Scottish enthusiast Peter Barr, whose quest for seeds took him, astride a donkey, all over the Pyrenees, where he was mistaken for a bandit; Reverend George Herbert Engleheart, clergyman and father of the modern daffodil; and Quaker plantswoman Sarah Backhouse – aka 'The Genius' – who turned daffodils pink! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.