Tulips In The Wild by Eric Breed from TOG 11/09/26

Kees Breed spent a lifetime breeding bulbs including these pretty small cupped varieties.

When looking through the Van Engelen bulb catalog I stumbled onto a special mix of daffodils called “Mr. Kees Breed’s Small Cupped Narcissus Mixture.”
Here’s the information from the catalog- “Mr. Breed was the loving curator of the world’s largest living museum of flower bulbs~over 5,000 varieties. Sadly, Mr. Breed, a quiet, hard-working man with a blue-eyed twinkle, passed away in 2017. In his memory, his son, Eric Breed, created this blend of his father’s favorite Small Cups. They range from primitive hybrids of N. poeticus and N. pseudonarcissus, to some that are really new. Most have flat flowers with distinctly colored cup edges. As Eric says, "they’re all charming and graceful~the upper-class ladies of the Daffodil world."

Some of the small cupped daffodils in the collection.

I ordered 50 bulbs and though long and hard about where they should be planted. It needed to be somewhere special, where they will always be enjoyed. I chose a nursery bed in the vegetable garden, right by the compost pile. They won’t get missed there!
I started to research Eric Breed and found that he’s a bulb hunter, traveling around the world to find bulbs and making amazing photographs as he searched.
He wrote a very hard to find booklet called “Going Wild For Tulip,” but collaborated with website Tulips In The Wild to share his photos of the flowers he discovered, but also the people who sell them.
The photos are wonderful.