
Britons urged to join hunt for rare daffodil breeds amid extinction fears
Britons have been asked to hunt for rare pink, white and 'bonfire yellow' daffodils in order to save threatened varieties from extinction.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which is running the daffodil count, is hoping to build a map of the spring blooms. It is asking people to log where daffodils are flowering in their area along with basic information such as colour, type and height.
It is hoped the data will help RHS scientists understand environmental influences on the plant, as well as revealing rare varieties at risk of being lost for ever.
There are three varieties of daffodil in particular the plant charity has asked the public to look out for. These include the Mrs RO Backhouse, which was one of the first pink daffodils to be bred, in 1923, with a solid coral-pink trumpet and ivory flowers. It is known to exist in national collections but its whereabouts beyond that is a mystery.
Scientists are also trying to find the Mrs William Copeland – a white, double-flowered daffodil, which has not been for sale in recent years but is known to have been given to a direct descendant of its original UK breeder by an American grower in the early 2000s.
The charity is also looking for the Sussex Bonfire – a double-flowered yellow and orange breed that has not been seen since 1998.
Gwen Hines, the CEO of the charity Plant Heritage, said: 'Springtime daffodils are abundant, but rare varieties could be lost from our gardens and roadsides if they're not found and cared for. While six national plant collections do protect some, many others aren't yet safeguarded, which is why we encourage everyone to look for rare varieties this spring.'
It is hoped that finding these unusual flowers will help aid their survival and allow scientists to preserve their genetic material, which could be valuable for future breeding of daffodils. It is important to have varied varieties of flowers as the climate changes and some are found to be more resilient to extreme weather than others.
All information and images of daffodils thought to be the above varieties should be submitted via the RHS website. Although now ubiquitous across the UK and a sign of spring, daffodils originated in the Iberian peninsula and north Africa. They were originally grown for medicinal use, but by the 1600s they began to be noticed for their cheerful blooms and grown for aesthetic purposes. There was a daffodil boom in Britain in the 1800s and enthusiasts hybridised them to create new garden daffodil forms and colours. Now, the UK grows 90% of the world's cut flower daffodils.
Dr Kálmán Könyves, principal scientist in the cultivated plant diversity team at the RHS, said: 'Daffodils have come to mark the arrival of spring and are celebrated for their welcome burst of colour in gardens, parks and roadsides. But there's more to this ubiquitous yellow flower than meets the eye, with 31,000 known varieties available in green, pink and red. Understanding where they can be found will help us in preserving this diversity for the future.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Record
8 hours ago
- Daily Record
NASA unveils first 'astonishing' images of huge Sun eruptions that cause Northern Lights
The astronomical phenomenon never fails to stun Scots and now we can see how it happens up close The Northern Lights are a huge spectacle in Scotland. We are one of a few lucky countries to experience the glorious phenomenon, with the best times being in March - April and September - October. The Northern Lights occur when charged particles from the sun collide with atmospheric gases near Earth's magnetic poles, emitting light at various wavelengths and painting the sky with a range of colours. In others words, the stunning colours in the sky is the result of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which occur when solar particles enter Earth's atmosphere. These ejections, typically composed of nitrogen and other gases, emit the vibrant and luminous lights known as the aurora borealis when they burn up in the atmosphere. Now, NASA has released its first images of these large solar eruptions so we can see how it all happens up close. And they are pretty incredible. "These first images are astonishing, but the best is still yet to come,' said Craig DeForest, principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute's Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado. "Once the spacecraft are in their final formation, we'll be able to routinely track space weather in 3D across the entire inner solar system." The CME can be seen rising in the centre of the image, above the blocked-out Sun. The images were presented at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this week. Stitched into a video, the snaps show giant CMEs growing as they travel across the inner solar system. In the video above, the first CME appears as an expanding "halo" around the Sun. The white dashes represent the view of an earlier coronagraph still used to forecast space weather. Later, the impact on Earth is visible as an abrupt brightening caused by the aurora takes place. For the star gazers among us, the new images show Venus, Jupiter, several constellations including Orion, and the Pleiades star cluster. The Moon can also be seen in the sequence of images. The images were taken with four cameras which work together as a single "virtual instrument" and captured the whole CMEs as they evolved in space in much greater detail than previously possible. Three Wide Field Imagers, which observe the faint, outermost portion of the Sun's atmosphere and solar wind (the continual stream of charged particles from the Sun), work with a Narrow Field Imager (NFI), a coronagraph which allows scientists to see details in the Sun's atmosphere by blocking out the bright light of the Sun itself. NASA will make continuous 3D observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere and the inner solar system so scientists can understand and predict space weather, which is driven by CMEs and can disrupt communications, endanger satellites and create Auroras, according to experts. This could help Scots get more accurate predictions about when the Northern Lights should appear overhead. From a space point of view, explorers will gain greater insight into how it impacts their other-worldly travels. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community!


ITV News
10 hours ago
- ITV News
'I'm sad for humanity': John Kerry reacts to Trump's sweeping climate cuts
ITV News Science Correspondent Martin Stew spoke to former US Secretary of State John Kerry from on board the RRS Sir David Attenborough, where scientsists are studying climate change deep within the Arctic Circle Former US Secretary of State John Kerry has told ITV News he is "very sad for humanity" following the Trump administration's sweeping climate cuts. Kerry was the US's first Special Presidential Envoy for Climate during Joe Biden's presidency and played a significant role in climate protection efforts. The new administration under Donald Trump has not shared Kerry's focus. "I'm very sad that our country is not leading in the way that we were with President Biden and President Obama," Kerry told ITV News Science Correspondent Martin Stew. "I'm very sad for humanity that any one nation is standing in the way of what the science tells us we must do in order to protect life, protect food production, protect the capacity of the ocean to provide us the oxygen that it provides us. "You know, it's not a matter of politics or ideology, it's a matter of science. We have an absolute period of time within which to avoid the worst consequences of the crisis." Kerry was speaking to ITV News Science Correspondent Martin Stew, who is on board the RRS Sir David Attenborough, as it researches climate change deep within the Arctic Circle. More than 9,000 miles separates the two - with Kerry in France for the United Nations Ocean Conference, where he is calling for decisive action to protect the ocean. However, through modern technology, they are able to see one another and speak of shared experiences. After Kerry was shown the polar winter sunrise through a laptop webcam, he recalled his own visit to the most remote continent in the world in 2016. "You just feel the wilderness all around you. But it's a thing of absolutely sheer wonder," he said. "It just reaffirmed every notion you have about responsibility, about the life of the planet, about the size of that wilderness and what it means to us on a human level. "And you just come away with great respect and awe and I think a sense of duty to transfer that to our daily endeavours and our responsibilities to deal with the climate crisis." The Trump administration has taken an axe to Biden-era environmental ambitions, rolled back landmark regulations, withdrawn climate project funding and instead bolstered support for oil and gas production in the name of an 'American energy dominance' agenda. The Environmental Protection Agency alone faces a 54.5% proposed cut to funding, taking its budget to a level last seen when Ronald Reagan was president. Under the latest tax and spending bill by the Trump administration, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", financial incentives for green technologies such as solar, wind, batteries, electric cars and heatpumps would be slashed. Existing nuclear power plants and biofuels will be subsidised, but climate experts say this would leave the country and its people burning more fossil fuels, despite strong popular and scientific support for a rapid shift to renewable energy. As often with Trump, the focus on energy production from oil and gas also comes alongside a slogan: 'Drill, baby, drill'. Kerry told ITV News of an alternative: "Build, baby, build." "Build the charging stations, build the solar fields, build the kinds of data centres that are going to be able to be managing their energy in a more effective way," he said. "What he's doing is, I think, sadly turning his back on the greatest marketplace the world has ever known. There are 8.1 billion people on this planet who want energy, and they're going to get it. "The question is, who's going to provide it, and is it going to be clean? "The United States has a unique opportunity here in a bigger economic transition and opportunity than the Industrial Revolution. "We have an opportunity to create jobs, clean jobs. People can make a profit with their investments just as they do today." Asked if he had a message for scientists in the Antarctic whose work could be halted due to a reduction in US funding, Kerry said to "bear with us." "Your work is absolutely critical to all of us," he said. "I would say you are in a position, you scientists, to help us get greater data, more backup, persuade people, put your science on the line, help us to convert those who have doubts. Then we can start to go forward faster and do what we need to do." The US is a world leader whose influence can push countries to act, or to fall back in line. Trump's presidency and denial of the climate crisis have led to some worrying that other governments will follow suit. Kerry, however, isn't convinced: "I believe most governments are going to stick with us because they know what they have at stake and they also have a strong commitment already to continuing. "One person in the world has pulled out of the Paris Agreement, and only one person in the world has done it twice. "Everybody else is moving forward, committed to try to meet these goals. "The absence of a big powerful nation like the United States, which is the wealthiest country on the planet, the absence of that country and adding to the ability to be able to accelerate this is really harmful.


NBC News
a day ago
- NBC News
SpaceX readies private launch of four astronauts to International Space Station
Four crew members are set to launch Wednesday on a privately funded mission to the International Space Station. The flight, organized by the Houston-based company Axiom Space, is slated to lift off at 8 a.m. ET from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The foursome will journey into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will broadcast live coverage of the launch beginning at 7:05 a.m. ET on NASA+. The flight was scheduled to launch Tuesday but high winds along the Florida coast forced a one-day delay. The mission, known as Ax-4, is expected to last about two weeks at the International Space Station. The mission will be led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has already logged a record 675 days in space — more than any other American astronaut. Joining her will be pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, an astronaut with the Indian Space Research Organization; mission specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, a Polish scientist with the European Space Agency; and mission specialist Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer from Hungary. Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski and Kapu will make history by becoming the first people from their countries to live and work on the International Space Station. During their two-week stay at the orbiting lab, the Ax-4 crew members will conduct a host of scientific experiments, according to NASA, including studies of muscle regeneration, how sprouts and edible microalgae grow in microgravity and how tiny aquatic organisms survive at the ISS. If the launch goes according to plan, the four astronauts will dock at the space station on Thursday at around 12:30 p.m. ET. The upcoming flight will be Axiom Space's fourth crewed mission to the International Space Station. The company's first private expedition to the ISS was in 2022 with an all-civilian crew. The price tag for the Ax-4 mission has not been publicly disclosed, but space tourists reportedly paid around $55 million per seat on previous Axiom Space expeditions.