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Narcissus 'King Alfred' [Daffodil]


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Blum, A.G. (2017) Narcissus L. 'King Alfred' (Amaryllidaceae) Daffodil. Flowers photographed in ultraviolet, infrared and visible light. UV-induced visible fluorescence included. http://www.ultraviol...us-king-alfred/

 

Middletown, New Jersey, USA

30 March 2010

Cultivar in home garden

 

Comment:

The King Alfred daffodil is an old English cultivar introduced in 1899. It was wildly popular for 50 years or so, representing the classical yellow daffodil celebrated by poets and painters. Breeders began to improve on this cultivar in the 1950s and sometimes named the newer plants as 'Improved King Alfred' or similar names. (See ref. 1).

 

I was told that the yellow daffodils growing in my back yard (for at least 35 years, possibly longer) are King Alfreds. I cannot be certain whether they are the original King Alfred strain or one of the newer types. Mine are remarkably hardy but do not spread much. I reliably get from 10 - 18 flowers from the cluster every year.

 

One section of the trumpet was peeled back when making these photos so that the stigma, stamens and pollen could be shown. This King Alfred is UV-absorbing with the corona slightly lighter than the tepals. The UV-LED lighting in the photograph does not make this particularly evident, but that tonality seems to also be the case with other trumpet daffodils which I have photographed in UV. I first showed these photos during my brief trial on Flickr.

 

Reference:

1. Missouri Botanical Garden (22 March2017) Narcissus 'King Alfred'. http://www.missourib...99&isprofile=0

 

Equipment [Nikon D200-broadband + Carl Zeiss 60mm f/4.0 UV-Planar]

 

Note: The EXIF in these files is incorrect due to their having been stacked in Photoshop. The listed exposures, taken from the raw files, are the correct ones

 

Visible Light [f/11 for 1/90" @ ISO-400 with Onboard Flash and Baader UVIR-Block Filter]

daffodilKingAlfredVis033010wf_35417proofCropFrame.jpg

 

Ultraviolet Light [f/11 for 1.5" @ ISO-400 with Nichia 365nm UV-LED and BaaderU UV-Pass Filter]

The intense false blue is partly a result of my attempts at noise reduction.

Usually daffodils have much more neutral false tones in UV. See below for an example.

daffodilKingAlfred365nmUV033010wf_35430proofCropFrame.jpg

 

Infrared Light [f/11 for 1/15" @ ISO-400 with Onboard Flash and B+W 093 IR-Pass Filter]

daffodilKingAlfred092IR033010wf_35441proofCropFrame.jpg

 

UV-Induced Visible Fluorescence

[f/11 for 2" @ ISO-400. Nichia 365 UV-Led unfiltered. Lens had Baader UVIR-Block Filter. Photographed in Darkness.]

Color accuracy not guaranteed.

daffodilKingAlfredUVIndVisFluor033010wf_35427proofCropFrame.jpg

 

Ultraviolet Light [f/11 for 1/1.5" @ ISO-400 with Nichia 365nm UV-LED and BaaderU UV-Pass Filter]

This view of the flower better shows the more neutral false colours and the lighter trumpet against the darker tepals.

daffodilKingAlfred365nmUV033010wf_35360pf.jpg

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Truly a royal presentation :D Thank you.

 

The velvety and shiny corolla surface is similar to what I've obtained in UV. Must be iridescence from conical cells?

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Thank you. "-)

 

I'm not sure about those streaks. We need to test whether that is iridescence by making more photos. Another set of photographs (not shown) seems to show that the streaks do not vary by angle of light.

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Here are three raw shots of a King Alfred daffodil from 2009. In the first two the light is, respectively, steady from the left and steady from the right. The thrid photo was made by light painting with the UV-LED. Note that the large streaks on the tepals are the same in all photos. We would expect to see some change in those streaks if they were produced by iridescence. There might be some evidence of iridescence on one of the lower tepals, but I'm not entirely sure.

 

The lighting was not even over all tepals. That also makes it difficult to determine iridescence. What looks like iridescence might just be bad lighting. So, somebody, please go find a big yellow daffodil and determine whether it is iridescent or just streaked. It will make a nice experiment. (Aim a UV-LED at different "raking" angles. Then try again for even lighting from left, right and center. And so forth.)

 

narcissus_uvBaad365UvLed_20090322wf_27186.jpg

 

narcissus_uvBaad365UvLed_20090322wf_27188.jpg

 

narcissus_uvBaad365UvLed_20090322wf_27189.jpg

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If you indulge me Andrea, a few of my own daffodils.

 

Not sure about their lineage, but these are from Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London, UK.

 

First, the Narcissus pseudonarcissus,

 

narcissus pseudonarcissus I0704064067.jpg

 

Then, Narcissus poëticus

 

narcissus poeticus UV I11051934390.jpg

 

Both with Baader U filter and the UV-Nikkor 105/4.5 lens, SB-140 flash. N. pseudonarcissus with D200, the N. poëticus with D40X.

 

The surface structure appears to play a major part in the resulting patterning of shimmering and streaks.

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Cool! Good to have more examples.

 

N. pseudonarcissus is the wild one (as per just looking in Wikipee), the national flower of Wales.

We need to go to Wales.

 

***

 

I had to correct the date on my original post. It was 2010.

 

 

***

 

My front yard Narcissus are still under snow and haven't bloomed yet. Micro-climates! North side of house way colder than south side of house.

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Daffodils in the wild are abundant all over the UK. Wales on its own would be nice, though. In fact, don't think I've been there for any period of time myself.
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@Andrea: I actually like your IR shot in this series - I'm usually unimpressed by floral IR images, but this one shows some nice, subtle variation/differentiation. Still, my favorite is your UVIVF shot. Regarding your UVIVF image note of "color accuracy not guaranteed", what is the latest consensus on just what basis would qualify color accuracy in UVIVF images? Should it simply be a qualitative matter of judgement - that is, of the observer attesting that the image matches what was seen by eye? Or maybe based on a white balance calibration target for the image (we already know the issues inherent in that approach)? Other?
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Mark, currently I think we can only make a qualitative judgement (i.e., "eyeball it") on color accuracy of our UV-induced fluorescent images. Setting the camera to Auto white balance or Daylight white balance seems to produce reasonably accurate UVIVF colors. If what we see on our monitor (which I hope is color calibrated) is reasonably close to the fluorescence we see in the dark, then we have probably done the best we can.

 

What do you think? :)

 

When I began to make UVIVF images, I did not always filter my UV-Led. So for those older images, I want to be careful not to mislead anyone, and I try to add some remark as I did above.

 

The subject of color accuracy is very much more complex than we typically talk about here on UVP. This isn't the place to address all those issues, too lengthy.

 

****

 

I continue to make IR floral signatures (if flowers can be said to have an IR signature) hoping for surprises. Sometimes it happens. The Gazania flowers are really interesting in IR. Dandelion phyllaries are IR-dark.

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