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Narcissus telamonius plenus | Van Sion Daffodil

Narcissus telamonius plenus | Van Sion Daffodil

Pronounced Tel-ah-MO-nee-us  Ple-nus

Division 4 - Double

See and read the Narcissus | Daffodils, Jonquil page for more about Daffodils, including a list of the Divisions.

Van Sion Daffodil has yellow petals streaked with green, or in my case, it seems more green with bits of yellow! This daffodil is highly variable as no two are alike.

It is double flower, that being twice as many petals. The petals are softly pointed. I often wondered if it were even really a Daffodil, especially without a trumpet-shaped cup, but they otherwise always acted like a Daffodil. With the fairly new internet image search I have finally been able to identify this flower.

Von Sion dates back to 1620 so it is a very old-fashioned Daffodil and is considered an heirloom. That's a 780 year old cultivar! It's an antique! Most likely it originated in the Netherlands. Vincent Sion, who was a Fleming (a person from Flanders Belgium who speaks Flemish Dutch instead of German), was living in London when this species of Daffodil first bloomed. Before he died he gave it to George Wilmer who named it after himself as Wilmer's Double Daffodil, which is used in Europe, but in America it is called Von Sion. The name "Von" in German means "from" or "of." Vincent Sion even documented his Daffodil as not blooming for many years, but after it started blooming, it bloomed for a long time.

While beautiful, it struggles to open up completely. I am in zone 6b (now 7a) and in colder zones I read it opens up just fine. With my zone having moved up some, this does not forebode well for the Daffodil in my yard. It struggles to open up and I thought there was something wrong with it all these years, but it actually is just what it does! So if you get one to open up all the way, how special is that!

For many years I have under appreciated these Von Sion Daffodils. I thought they were a fluke or something that had created itself into something new and odd. Now that I know these are normal and have a fun name, I am going to appreciate them more in each coming year. These Von Sion Daffodils were in my yard when we moved in here in 1986 and they are still blooming and spreading.

2024

Here are many photos that I took in 2024 just because I get SO excited at how each one is so very different! Take a moment when scrolling to note how they are all the same and yet so different. That is kind of like humans!

Sometimes the bract never opens and it turns into this complete brown onion skin-like paper pieces. It's SO odd it's beautiful.

Oh! The Pink Charms were blooming later than the Ice Follies and I was excited to see them.