Photo: João Farminhão
One of the primary conservation priorities of a botanical garden is the safeguarding of the endemic flora of the country in which it is located. From this perspective, the Algarve daffodil (Narcissus willkommii) is the most significant species in the JBUC collections. This daffodil is endemic to central Algarve and is currently classified as Endangered on the Red List of Vascular Flora of Continental Portugal. In the wild, it is reduced to only a few thousand individuals along the Quarteira River, flowering from late January to April.
The bulbs of this species cultivated in the Garden’s nurseries (PT-0-COI-XXXX/00004) are a legacy of the scientific collections of Abílio Fernandes, director of the Botanical Garden from 1957 to 1974, who gained international recognition for his pioneering studies on the evolution and classification of daffodils. Notably, his work contributed to the understanding of the genomic organisation of these plants, for which karyological preparations were required, largely obtained from specimens cultivated in the Botanical Garden.