Long celebrated in art and literature, narcissi are associated with a number of themes in different cultures, ranging from death to good fortune, and as symbols of spring.

Closest to the stem (proximal) is a floral tube above the ovary, then an outer ring composed of six tepals (undifferentiated sepals and petals), and a central disc to conical shaped corona.

[7] Narcissus plants have one to several basal leaves which are linear, ligulate or strap-shaped (long and narrow), sometimes channelled adaxially to semiterete, and may (pedicellate) or may not (sessile) have a petiole stalk.

Umbellate species have a fleshy racemose inflorescence (unbranched, with short floral stalks) with 2 to 15 or 20 flowers, such as N. papyraceus (see illustration, left) and N. tazetta (see Table I).

[5] The corona, or paracorolla, is variously described as bell-shaped (funneliform, trumpet), bowl-shaped (cupular, crateriform, cup-shaped) or disc-shaped with margins that are often frilled, and is free from the stamens.

[16] The "paperwhite" form, including sections Jonquilla, Apodanthi and Narcissus, has a relatively long, narrow tube and a short, shallow, flaring corona.

[8][5] The ovary is inferior (below the floral parts) and trilocular (three chambered) and there is a pistil with a minutely three lobed stigma and filiform (thread like) style, which is often exserted (extending beyond the tube).

[11] The infrageneric phylogeny of Narcissus still remains relatively unsettled,[21] the taxonomy having proved complex and difficult to resolve,[12][16][19] due to the diversity of the wild species, the ease with which natural hybridization occurs, and extensive cultivation and breeding accompanied by escape and naturalisation.

[93] Although the family Amaryllidaceae are predominantly tropical or subtropical as a whole, Narcissus occurs primarily in Mediterranean region, with a centre of diversity in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).

N. pseudonarcissus ranges from the Iberian Peninsula, via the Vosges Mountains to northern France and Belgium, and the United Kingdom where there are still wild stocks in Southern Scotland.

In Germany it is found mainly in the nature reserve at Perlenbach-Fuhrtsbachtal and the Eifel National Park, where in the spring at Monschau the meadows are teeming with yellow blooms.

[16] In Germany, which has relatively little limestone, Narcissus pseudonarcissus grows in small groups on open mountain meadows or in mixed forests of fir, beech, oak, alder, ash and birch trees with well-drained soil.

NWSV produces greenish-purple streaking on the leaves and stem turning white to yellow, and premature senescence reducing bulb size and yield.

[115] Planted bulbs are susceptible to nematodes, the most serious of which is Ditylenchus dipsaci (Narcissus eelworm), the main cause of basal plate disease[138] in which the leaves turn yellow and become misshapen.

Narcissi have been cultivated from at least as early as the sixteenth century in the Netherlands, when large numbers of bulbs where imported from the field, particularly Narcissus hispanicus, which soon became nearly extinct in its native habitat of France and Spain, though still found in the southern part of that country.

Narcissi are now popular as ornamental plants for gardens, parks and as cut flowers, providing colour from the end of winter to the beginning of summer in temperate regions.

[6] Many of the breeding programs have concentrated on the corona (trumpet or cup), in terms of its length, shape, and colour, and the surrounding perianth[19] or even as in varieties derived from N. poeticus a very reduced form.

[187] The toxic effects of ingesting Narcissus products for both humans and animals (such as cattle, goats, pigs, and cats) have long been recognised and they have been used in suicide attempts.

Ingestion of N. pseudonarcissus or N. jonquilla is followed by salivation, acute abdominal pains, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, then neurological and cardiac events, including trembling, convulsions, and paralysis.

[21] On 1 May 2009, a number of schoolchildren fell ill at Gorseland Primary School in Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, England, after a daffodil bulb was added to soup during a cookery class.

[186] One of the most common dermatitis problems for flower pickers, packers, florists, and gardeners, "daffodil itch", involves dryness, fissures, scaling, and erythema in the hands, often accompanied by subungual hyperkeratosis (thickening of the skin beneath the nails).

It is blamed on exposure to calcium oxalate, chelidonic acid or alkaloids such as lycorine in the sap, either due to a direct irritant effect or an allergic reaction.

The Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus listed narcissus root in De Medicina among medical herbs, described as emollient, erodent, and "powerful to disperse whatever has collected in any part of the body".

In the eighteenth century the Irish herbal of John K'Eogh recommended pounding the roots in honey for use on burns, bruises, dislocations and freckles, and for drawing out thorns and splinters.

[21] Extracts of Narcissus have demonstrated a number of potentially useful biological properties including antiviral, prophage induction, antibacterial, antifungal, antimalarial, insecticidal, cytotoxic, antitumor, antimitotic, antiplatelet, hypotensive, emetic, acetylcholine esterase inhibitory, antifertility, antinociceptive, chronotropic, pheromone, plant growth inhibitor, and allelopathic.

[21] An ethanol extract of Narcissus bulbs was found effective in one mouse model of nociception, para-benzoquinone induced abdominal constriction, but not in another, the hot plate test.

[206][207] In Ancient Greece narcissi were planted near tombs, and Robert Herrick describes them as portents of death, an association which also appears in the myth of Persephone and the underworld (see § Art, below).

No flower has received more poetic description except the rose and the lily, with poems by authors from John Gower, Shakespeare, Milton (see Roman culture, above), Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.

[252][253] Among the English romantic movement writers none is better known than William Wordsworth's short 1804 poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud[241] which has become linked in the popular mind with the daffodils that form its main image.

[255] Yet the description given of daffodils by his sister, Dorothy is just as poetic, if not more so,[170] just that her poetry was prose and appears almost an unconscious imitation of the first section of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (see Greek culture, above).