Description
The correct name for the widely spreading, eastern Mediterranean plants formerly thought of as just being Narcissus serotinus. However old treatments (and many new studies) which apply this name are flawed and refer to two or even three different species. (In fact N. serotinus is a valid name, but it is a species with a much more limited in distribution and it is largely confined to the western Mediterranean regions).
N. obsoletus proper is a very variable plant. It has spikes with one to four flowers, (serotinus usually has one or very rarely two flowers at most). These are smallish, by garden daffodil standards, but are a good size for one of the autumnal species. They are highly fragrant though the fragrance varies with floral age, from sweet and light upon opening, to heavier and more medicinal (a bit like back liniment) as the flowers get older. They are the shape of stars, in white, with yellow or yellow-green pollen and a tiny, more or less entire, vestigial olive-yellow, yellow-orange, orange or red-brown, cup. (serotinus has a bright yellow, divided cup). The cup of obsoletus can be triangular, triangular-rounded or properly rounded and the edges can be incurving, or not, it is quite variable and no one feature regarding cup-shape is totally diagnostic. We have noted cup-colour differences even between the earliest (olive-yellow) and the latest flowers (yellow) in our own stock, though the stock is true. This is simply variability within the species.
The flowers of obsoletus are held on 15-20 (25) cm tall stems and they can be borne with or without the leaves (serotinus proper, almost always flowers without its leaves). The shape of the floral tube also differs between the two species and they really can’t be confused once you know that several, similar autumnal species exist and you are familiar with the differences. We have illustrated the more or less, parallel-sided tube of obsoletus in gallery picture 5
This likes a fertile and well-drained loam-based compost, maintained on a Mediterranean cycle of watering and temperatures. We find it moderately cold-hardy, but in order to ensure decent flowering and increase/seed set we keep the species in pots under frost-free glass. Others (including our original source) have it on an unheated regime. To promote flowering, we dry rest these over summer after growth dies back in late spring, then try to soak the compost, in late August but then leave the to dry out, not watering again until 4-5 weeks later. This usually works the trick. Please note though that most of this little group of “primitive” autumn-flowering Narcissus are sporadic in flowering unless conditions are perfect.
Horticultural Stock under an MK collection umber, originally from German grower the late Manfred Koenen, this is traceable back to an original find MK.6374 in SW Turkey, Antalya province, near Kemer. This was collected as N. serotinus in 1974. At that time the identification was based on the then current thinking. N. serotinus is in fact a valid species and the naming was correct according to the thinking in 1974. However the historical naming of these autumn-flowering Daffodils and the more modern interpretation of the naming was subsequently found to be a minefield, with several botanical names being applied almost randomly across what are now thought to be several different species. The other extreme was that just one name was applied for them all! Acceptance of the names and the delineation of the species within existing names has been slowly unravelled and we now know that these Eastern populations are not N. serotinus but they are all N. obsoletus.
This is one of the more free-flowering forms with us and it grows readily also. The flowers are a little variable, with the cups tending to be towards olive and orange (rather than yellow as in some forms) and being more noticeably triangular, rather than inclined to triangular-rounded or rounded. The corona is clearly notched into 3 fused, or partially-fused, segments.
