Habitat: woodland
Soil: with plenty of humus
Height: 8 cm
Flowering: mid winter to early spring
Width: 15 cm
Cyclamen make a most welcome splash of colour, with ne or more species in flower throughout the year. The flowers, with their characteristic reflexed petals, are in various shades of pink through to white, and the leaves are very often mottled or patterned with silver. A few species are not fully hardy, but many are, and left to seed themselves they can eventually make an impressive display.
Cyclamen coum heralds the end of winter. In some years we have even had one or two flowers open by Christmas, even in Scotland. Whenever they first reflex their petals to give the distinctively shaped blooms, they stay in flower for several months, and then show their attractively patterned round leaves. Under the species name comes a range of leaf patterns and flower colours.
| Cyclamen cilicium is a rare species in its native Turkey, but not difficult in cultivation. Its deep green, oval leaves are marked with silver, and the pale pink flowers have a bright magenta blotch at the base of each petal. | |
| Cyclamen coum album is a white-flowered form of this fine species, which looks delicate with its small, round leaves, but which comes into flower in the depths of winter, and keep blooming for two to three months. | |
| Cyclamen coum f. coum Pewter Group has the silver markings on the leaf extended so that they almost cover the whole surface. Seedlings vary, but we try to select the ones with the best colouring. Flowers will be shades of pink. | |
| Cyclamen hederifolium provides one of the delights of the gardening year, when its first flowers appear at the end of August. The pink (occasionally white) flowers appear shortly before the wonderfully patterned leaves start to unfurl, and an established plant may have hundreds of flowers arising from a soup-plate sized corm. We sell plants raised from seed. Very large corms offered in some garden centres are almost certainly dug from the wild. | |
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| Cyclamen libanoticum comes, as its name indicates, from Lebanon, where it is extremely rare in the wild. The green, cordate leaves have silver-grey marbled patterns, a fine setting for the large, short-stemmed flowers, which open white and then turn pink, with a small crimson blotch at the base of each petal. |