We have all the bulbs at the nursery for half price. Another lousy bulb season, exasperated by poor decisions by the bulb company. For some odd reason they decided to re-label all the daffodils as narcissus. So we get in packages of daffodil bulbs and they come labeled as narcissus. No mention of the word daffodil on the package. So what happens all bulb season? "Do you have Daffodils, I don't want narcissus." Each and every time they asked we would have to explain that narcissus was the botanical classification for daffodils. What a waste of time.
After all the discussions we and others in the trade have had about keeping it simple for the customer, and not over using the Latin names for plants, the bulb companies do the exact opposite. I cannot even imagine the reasoning behind this. As poor as bulb sales have been, and are likely to remain, changes like this can really eat into sales. Why couldn't they just call them Daffodil "Ice Follies." What was the reasoning behind changing the name from daffodil to narcissus? Yes, I know they are actually narcissus, but it's not me they need to market to. Do my customers care that officially daffodils are narcissus? Of course not.
No wonder bulb companies are going out of business, and bulb sales continue to decline. Every year that we have to sell the bulbs at a discount is one year closer we get to not carrying bulbs at all. Well, we will always sell some daffodils since the deer don't eat them. Now if I could only find some daffodils to sell. Narcissus for years has meant "Paperwhites" and other small flowering daffodils. That's what the customer expects.