Why did the Scottish daffodils die early? Blame the English!
Daffodils are the beautiful flowers that welcome us out of the winter and into the Spring, but for Scotland this did not last for long. The flowers began to wilt very early on. So why was this?
Scotland suffered a usually mild winter which caused the flowers to bloom earlier at the same time as the flowers in England. The Daffodils usually flower 3 to 4 weeks after the ones in England do due to the temperature differences between the two countries.
There are a fleet of flower pickers (around 500 in total) that pick the Daffodils in England first due to the greater demand. They then harvest the ones in Scotland when they have bloomed. Instead this year the Daffodils in Scotland stayed, lonely and then began to die. Angus, a huge flower supplier in Scotland claimed that because of this they lost more than 15 million flowers. The flower pickers did not pick the flowers in Scotland because they were busy with the English ones. By the time they got to them, they were dead.
This was devastating for the Scottish economy, especially on the run up the biggest time of the year for the flower industry which was Mother’s day.
To add insult to injury for the Scots, because the flowers were early to bloom, the market had already snapped up the English Daffodils leaving the Scots empty handed. After the English have sold their Daffodils the market for the flowers dropped significantly making them worthless.
It was actually only 10 days premature; however this was enough for the 15 million flowers to be wasted. The change in the weather climate is having a devastating impact on crop growers all around the country. Last year England suffered severe crop loss with the harsh winter.
