A golden flower with a dark side.

Mistress Talpa and her friends have spent the morning decorating the village Easter cross with daffodils. They are bonny flowers. but .....

Whatever you do, don't ever eat a daffodil (or a tulip) bulb as they contain toxic alkaloids that cause dizziness, abdominal pain and upset, and convulsions. In the Netherlands during the Second World War, starving cattle fed daffodil bulbs were fatally poisoned and one of my childhood neighbours was still suffering terrible stomach problems in the 1950s from having been fed boiled daffodil and tulip bulbs whilst a POW of the Germans in the first world war.