“Seems daffodils (we called them “Easter lilies”) never disappear once started. And thankfully deer don’t eat them which is one of the reasons why they can last. About this time every year when I was growing up Mom would want to take a flower hunting trip to old home places, mostly on national forest. We brought back Easter lilies several times I guess but always yellow ones and as best I recall only one form. I was probably a teenager before I even realized there were other colors as well as other shapes and sizes. They do indeed say, ‘Spring is here!’ with their smiling yellow faces. But on February 10, 2020 I took some pictures of them covered in snow. Didn’t seem to hurt them though.”
—Ron Stephens
I never heard daffodils called Easter lilies until I started Blind Pig and The Acorn. Over the years I’ve had several folks say their families always used Easter lilies to name the flowers instead of daffodils or jonquils.
Folks have also said forsythia (what we call yellow bells) was referred to as Easter bushes in their family. That usage was widespread enough for it to be documented in the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.
Easter bush (also Easter flower) noun The common forsythia plant (Forsythia virdissima).
1944 Hayes Word-List NC 33 Easter bush = forsythia. 1960 Stubbs Mountains-Wise (April-May) 6 It is readily seen from it’s blooming season how forsythia acquired the name “Easter flower.” 1995 Montgomery Coll: Easter bush (known to Cardwell).
—Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
A few days ago Randy mentioned his father saying there was usually a cold spell of weather on Easter. I’ve also heard folks say that and noticed it myself. Seems like every year Granny would get me a new spring dress and sandals for Easter and then it would be so cold I’d be wishing for my winter dress and warmer shoes.
With temperatures on the chilly side I’d say Randy’s daddy was right again this year.
Last night’s video: Common Folks 10.
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Mama called them March flowers ,God bless you friends
A very interesting post. Growing up, (in Kennesaw GA) I always called daffodils jonoquils. Forsythia I grew up calling Yellow bells. I’ve never heard Yellow Bells called an Easter bush. Easter lilies were always store bought with thick, white blooms.
It’s a good thing daffodils are hardy because this year in Cherokee County GA they’ve survived temps from 28 degrees to 85 degrees and more rainy days than dry days.
A Blessed Easter to all.
Daffodils bloomed early where I grew up in Western Pennsylvania. My grandpap had planted the border between our property and his with flowers that ran from our neighbor’s house, built in the old farm’s strawberry patch, to his long driveway all across the back of our big yard. Grandpap loved flowers and surrounded his huge vegetable garden out back of his house with daffodils for spring and day lilies that then bloomed all summer. His roses wound around the old post fence all along the drive down to the old Macadam road that ran between our place and the reservoir that serviced the coal mine when it was still worked. But daffodils were the first of spring’s gold and promise of riotous color all summer. I miss the old place where I grew up and love looking out long back room windows at my own yellow messengers of spring.
I saw something today I hadn’t seen (or at least hadn’t noticed and thought about) in probably 50 years. Blooming birch trees! Have you ever pondered a birch bloom? It’s not a blossom. It’s a tassel, a braid or maybe just a mini possum’s tail hanging down. Maybe it could be considered an understatement when compared to the dogwood or the daffodil if presented as an Easter flower but today it piqued my interested again after half a century.
i was an adult and married before i ever knew that what we called Easter Lilies were actually daffodils…thats all we ever called them…when i went to lowes one time and saw actual Easter Lilies i told the lady they had them labeled wrong …
Yes, it’s raining and 45˚ here. Breezy too. We always called them daffodils and jonquils. Yellow bells were sometimes called forsythia, or Easter bush. We always said there was a “little winter” at Easter because all of Nature mourned the death of Jesus the Son of God.
The daffodils here aren’t brave enough to show their faces yet, but soon, soon, maybe 2-3 weeks. : )
Daffodils have long bloomed here when we had the warm days. I always called them buttercups growing up and heard them called jonquils also. Easter lilies were always the white ones and one year my mama was given one for Easter, so she decided to plant it near her rose garden. She didn’t think it would make it, but it did and bloomed each year. It was quite unusual to see an Easter lily blooming in a rose garden. That lily saw many Easters. We too are experiencing a cold spell here. Rain and 47 today so no egg hunts for outdoors. I also remember Easters when it would have felt better to have a winter dress on. I feel sorry for the little ones tomorrow who are wearing sleeveless dresses and sandals. Also, does anyone remember putting food coloring in water and placing a bunch of daffodils in a vase and in a few days the ruffled part of the daffodil would turn the color of the water. My second-grade teacher did that one year and that was so pretty. We also did it at home too.
My mother called the solid yellow ones daffodils but the ones with the white outer blooms and the yellow trumpet in the center she called buttercups. I guess the yellow was the butter and the white was the cup.
When they called daffodils “Easter lilies” what did they call real Easter Lilies?
Ann, hope you see this. For many years we did not have “real” Easter lilies. Then mysteriously there were some on the highway right of way and of course Mom had to get some. Last I knew they were blooming tall and fine. However, I forget what we called them, but not – I think – Easter lilies.
“Real” Easter lilies came to America from Southeast Asia in the late 1800s. Daffodils came two centuries earlier from the Mediterranean area. The Appalachian people who first called daffodils Easter Lilies probably never saw the “real” flower.
If daffodils came from the same place Easter came from who’s to say which is the “real” thing. Daffodils could have been growing at the foot of the cross where Jesus was hung. Drops of his blood could have fallen on their blooms. Daffodils could have witnessed the angel rolling back the stone on Easter morning. “Real Easter Lilies”, I am confident, were nowhere near!
In my neck of the woods of NC, the Daffodils have already bloomed and the flowers dropped off leaving the green foliage behind to remind us of their existence. I never called them Easter Lillies, because Easter Lillies where much bigger flowers with leaves on their stems instead of leave growing from the ground or by their side. Maybe it’s because I’m originally from WV. Either way folks want to call them, they are beautiful flowers! It rained all day yesterday and today is the same. We had 80 degree sunny skies on Wednesday, Thursday it was close to the same, then Friday it dropped down in 40’s that morning with mid 30 last night. Today is the same, but rain should clear up some on Sunday morning with a little warmer temps. The way I look at the weather kind of fits remembering the day our Lord Jesus was crucified on Friday. Darkness fell and what a cold day it was because His light had left this world for our sins, so much sadness, but it was Good News for us because God had a plan. Then Sunday morning the “Son” rose again! He Lives! If Jesus had not fulfilled God’s plan to redeem us from sin, we would all have no hope of eternal life with God in heaven, so have a blessed and “Happy Resurrections Day!” Enjoy the celebration with family and friends this Easter Sunday!
We simply called Daffodils Easter flowers when I was growing up. The Easter flowers that bloom at the historical site across from my lane have been a sight to see this year with bright yellow flowers as far as one can see. It was an orphanage for many years before becoming Kentucky’s first black college where the scholars lived and worked. I will always wonder if it was the little orphans or the students who added the beauty of free flowers to the place they called home.
Our warm-up starts tomorrow and I can’t wait. I plan to go to church and then spend the day with my family as my youngest daughter cooks her untraditional Easter dinner of grilled food.
Your writing has me sentimental this morning, trying to remember Easter as a little girl, and it’s hiding quite well from me for some reason. I can remember making May Baskets in school and hanging them on our neighbors front door knob. I can vaguely remember hiding a big stuffed bunny for my baby brother’s first Easter, (he would’ve bn 8 months old and I would’ve bn 10 1/2 yrs old, in 1976.) I don’t remember coloring eggs or dressing up. My sister and I would sometimes go to church with my grandma (my dads mom,that we weren’t as close to) but I don’t remember it being Easter. I think I remember Easter baskets, the store bought kind with the individual candies taped to the plastic grass, but I can’t bring the memory up into a good visual. I’m gonna have to ask my mom and see if she has some pictures that might jog my memory. So thank you for the reminisce Tipper! Have a beautiful Easter, Glory to God on High!!! Jesus, my Lord and Savior, thank you for your wonderful Presley family, who brings such gentle beauty to this old world (that can seem so harsh some days.) Bless Tipper and her family beyond anything she could ever fathom Father God (and please Father, continue to surround her friend’s family with your love, favor and blessings as they’ve tragically lost two beautiful loved ones so early in life, let them feel your presence this Easter weekend Father!)
I can see, Tipper, how intriguing language is and how it kinda ‘pulls you in’. Debbie’s comment about east compared to central KY intrigues me as an (I would say) (south)eastern KY native. I was unaware that difference existed. And the characterization as “flat talking” makes me wonder, which is the ‘flat’ one?
As for names of things, I’d say just call’em the name that warms your heart the most.
Blessings to each and all and thanks be for a “blessed hope”.
I not well traveled or very smart either but read a lot of books more for entertainment or enjoyment than education. An example, I have just started reading one now titled There’s A Porcupine In My Outhouse about living in a small cabin in the Vermont wilderness. It seems like a lot of places in the same state will have different languages or customs. I read a series of small paper back books written by a Michigan game warden and learned the people in the UP are called Yoopers and the ones in the lower state are called Trolls with some of the language or customs being different. We a have a a dearly loved anchor news lady on one our local stations from Upper Michigan and I asked her about this. She laughed and said she was a Yooper.
Assuming Central Kentucky is not mountainous
Not sure what happened to the rest of my post.
Ron – Appalachian vocabulary is truly amazing. You were raised in Kentucky (a world away from my small community in North Western North Carolina) and say Easter lilies and Easter bush like I do. But Tipper being raised in NC doesn’t say either. And the term yellow bell was never used in my area. My Aunt did occasionally say jonquil. Thank you for writing about Easter lilies. I truly enjoyed it.
Daffodils are beautiful and always put a smile on my face. daffodils is the only name I ever heard. my grandfather used to grow Easter Lillies in his front yard he sold to florists all over the state. Forsynthi and daffodils are mostly all gone now and tulips are blooming in my area
We have daffodils and yellow bells growing here on the place. I love them both. They always encourage my heart that Spring is on the way.
We call daffodils “March flowers or March flags” I guess because they peak out of the ground in March. I never heard them called daffodils until I got married. Funny, my husband’s family is from central KY and mine is eastern KY but it’s a different accent and language altogether. We call it “flat” talking.
Kentucky is kinda like Tennessee – there’s an eastern section, a middle section, and a western section. I think a visitor to either state might not recognize any difference except the topography, but there are differences. My ancestors ended up in the western section of both Tennessee and Kentucky – always going further west as the land became available. I love the fact that in the 1700s all of Kentucky was Kentucky County Virginia.
Tennessee was part of North Carolina until 1796. Tennessee did not fight in the Revolutionary War. Men from what later became Tennessee fought but at the time they were citizens of the Tarheel State. Same with Kentucky. It’s soldiers fought are Virginians.
My folks always called them March flowers. They may have bloomed later, years ago.
Amazing what people call flowers now adays. I have always called Easter lilies are the white ones. The Easter lilies that grow wild are different. I have tried to transplant them and they EVER will grow again. However and whomever calls flowers differently, does not matter to me….I love flowers of any kind. Thanks for your Friday read and see ya tomorrow. Happy early Easter Sunday…He is risen and is alive, Praise the Lord.
I have never heard daffodils called Easter lilies, I thought Easter lilies were a different flower with a white bloom. As I write this comment this morning in Greenville County, SC it is raining, 42 degrees with a feel like temperature of 36 degrees and today’s high of 46. Tonight ‘s low of 40 and tomorrow night and Monday night predicted to be 38 degrees. At my home there will probably be a light frost on the windshields and roof tops. It will be wet and cold for the outside sunrise services in the morning but I intend to be at the cemetery and graves of my wife and daughter for the cemeteries sunrise service. I think it would be safe to say Daddy hit the nail on the head this year. There has been a lot of talk in the last week about planting gardens, and today about deer not eating daffodils, outside of being hot and dry, deer cause more problems with having a garden in my area than anything else, if you go out driving early each morning the side roads and main highway will have dead deer laying everywhere that have been hit and killed overnight. I guess it is a blessing for the buzzards, they always have plenty to eat! I will be late with any comment tomorrow, but would like to go ahead and wish every member a happy Easter and say I hope you can attend church and spend time with your family if you wish too.
Good morning!
This post brought back memories. We had a row of easter bushes along the fence in the back yard. I also remember snow on many Easter mornings. My Dad would take our dress shoes out and rub sandpaper on the bottom so we wouldn’t slip. I’m sure I still fell anyway. I can trip in clear weather just as well as snowy weather.