DAFFODILS have burst into bloom in a Scottish garden seven months earlier than normal, an event that has left horticultural experts dumbfounded.
In a year already characterised by weather extremes, the three dwarf-variety daffodils appeared this week in a garden on Royal Deeside.
Experts speculated that the cold summer may have fooled the flowers - which had already bloomed in spring - into thinking they had just gone through another winter.
Charlotte and Jim Donald were taken aback when the flowers appeared again in their back garden in Torphins.
Mrs Donald, a retired pharmacist, said yesterday: "It came as a total surprise because they're not supposed to be there. I don't know how or why it's happened, but I suppose it's another sign things have gone topsy-turvy.
"They're pretty special. So I'm lavishing them with care and attention to see how long they can last."
Experts confessed they were equally baffled by the appearance of daffodils in August.
Peter Brownless, the nursery supervisor at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, said: "Neither I nor any of my colleagues have heard of this happening before. However, nothing with plants is beyond the bounds of possibility because they rely on environmental triggers to make them do something.
"Daffodils react to temperature. They need to know when spring is. When they have had a series of temperatures which indicate it's spring, they flower.
"What I assume must have happened is that we had a mildish winter then a warmish period in April. The daffodils probably flowered before that warm period and then, when the temperature dropped, they probably assumed winter had happened and decided in August that spring has come already."
