What a Wonderful World

'Roberta Watrous 7Y-GYP'

I picked these daffodils yesterday from a little patch in the bed by my driveway.  They are among the very few I continue to grow out of several hundred varieties I grew about 15 years ago, when I maintained a collection of “novelty daffodils” for competition in daffodil shows, sponsored by local societies across the country and in the annual national show held by the American Daffodil Society in a different city each spring.  These blooms are by far not the most impressive flowers I ever grew, but I treasure them nonetheless and here’s why. 

The registered name of this flower is ‘Roberta Watrous 7Y-GYP’.  All show flowers must have either a seedling # assigned by the hybridizer or a name officially registered with the Royal Horticulture Society in London, England to be judged on a show bench.  This flower was named by a woman in Indiana to honor a well known daffodil grower and miniature hybridizer, Roberta Watrous, who lived in Washington, D.C.  Many thought then, and probably even now, it was a pitiful choice of flowers to name for someone so renowned in the daffodil world, a celebrity, as it was, on three continents.  But, the RHS doesn’t argue merits, it only accepts names and codes as they are presented and if they are unique, since no two flowers can bear the same name.