Amaryllidaceae: The Amaryllis and Daffodil Family

An umbel of flowers on a leafless stalk, narcissus and allium

Amaryllidaceae is a family of bulbs, and almost everything a florist needs to know about it follows from that. These are plants that store a season's energy underground, spend it in one fast burst of flower, and then die back. It is also the family responsible for the single most useful piece of care advice in the trade, which is that daffodils cannot share a vase.

Order

Asparagales

Genera

about 75 genera

Species

roughly 1,600 species

Where it grows

Warm and temperate regions worldwide, with centers in South Africa and South America

7 flowers in this family

Everything in this guide that belongs to Amaryllidaceae

Agapanthus

Agapanthus praecox
10-18 days

Agapanthus

Allium

Allium hollandicum and relatives
7-14 days

Allium

Amaryllis

Hippeastrum spp.
7-14 days cut, 3-6 weeks as a bulb

Amaryllis

Daffodils

Narcissus
5-7 days

Daffodils

Nerine

Nerine bowdenii
14-21 days

Nerine

Clusters of small white paperwhite narcissus flowers

Paperwhites

Narcissus papyraceus
1-2 weeks in flower

Paperwhites

Snowdrops

Galanthus nivalis
3-5 days, and only if kept cold

Snowdrops

Built on a bulb, and it shows

Every member here grows from a true bulb, which is a compressed stem wrapped in fleshy leaf bases holding next season's flower already formed inside. That is why a bulb feels heavy for its size and why a good one will flower on water alone with no soil and no feeding. Everything it needs is already packed in.

The flowers usually arrive in an umbel, a cluster where every stalk springs from the same point at the top of a leafless stem, opening out like the ribs of an umbrella. Agapanthus and allium show it most obviously. Daffodils have reduced it to one or a few blooms but the structure is the same, and you can still see the papery sheath the cluster burst out of.

The stems are hollow and smooth, with no leaves on them at all. That makes them clean to handle and easy to cut, and it also makes them prone to splitting and to drawing air if they are cut dry.

The sap problem, and it is not a myth

Cut a daffodil and it bleeds a clear slime. That sap carries calcium oxalate crystals and other compounds that block the water uptake of other flowers, and it does it fast. A daffodil put straight into a mixed arrangement will shorten everything around it, and tulips are the classic casualty.

The fix is simple and it works. Condition daffodils on their own in plain water for several hours, ideally overnight, then move them across without recutting. The bleeding largely stops once the cut has sealed, and a daffodil that has been stood alone first behaves itself afterward. Recut it later and you start the problem again.

The same sap is why nobody should be chewing on these. Every part of the plant is toxic if eaten, bulb worst of all, and there is a small but steady history of people mistaking daffodil bulbs for onions. That is not a coincidence either, given what else is in this family.

What lasts and what does not

The range here is wider than in most families. Nerine and agapanthus are genuinely long lived in a vase and will outlast a great many roses. Amaryllis is excellent value: one thick stem carries several enormous blooms that open in sequence, so the display keeps changing for a couple of weeks. Cut the stem hollow-end down and some florists put a cane inside it, because the weight of four open flowers on a water-filled tube is a lot to ask.

At the other end, snowdrops are a few days at best and only if they are kept genuinely cold, which is why they are a garden pleasure far more than a commercial cut flower. Daffodils are short too, five to seven days, and they are sold on the promise of spring rather than on longevity.

Buy the whole family tight. These open fast and they open in the warm, so a daffodil in green bud on Monday is a full flower by Wednesday and over by the weekend. A box that arrives already open has lost half its life before it reached you.

Relatives you already know

This is the onion family. Garlic, leeks, chives, shallots and the ordinary kitchen onion are all Allium, sitting in the same family as the amaryllis on the windowsill. Crush an ornamental allium stem and the smell tells you immediately, which is worth remembering before putting one in a table arrangement.

That smell is also a practical point in the cooler. Allium in dirty water announces itself across the room, and the answer is clean water changed often rather than more flower food.

The family name comes from Amaryllis, a shepherdess in Virgil's pastoral poetry. There is a lasting confusion attached to it: the plant everybody calls amaryllis and buys at Christmas is really Hippeastrum, from South America, while the true Amaryllis is a South African genus with two species. The trade name stuck and is not going anywhere, so both usages are correct in practice as long as you know which one is on the label.

Inside this family

Most genera in this guide hold a single flower, so they are covered on that flower's own page. One genus in Amaryllidaceae holds several and has a page of its own.

Narcissus, The daffodil genus

All flower families Learn about flowers