Cyclamen in Early Spring

I'm preparing a talk about cyclamen, or sow's bread, for a garden club...and looking afresh at my delicate-looking-but-hardy, petite species cyclamen.

Cyclamen coum (above) is known as a winter species so it's not surprising to have a few still blooming.

 

But looking closer at a white-flowering one, dang, it's got propeller-like petals, like C. alpinum (Syn. C. trochoptantherum) (above). How nice to discover a new species in the garden (well, a pot), and such an idiosyncratic one at that. It's white, too. (How could I have missed this? - has it not flowered before? Or did I just glance at it, enjoy it, but never really think about it?)

Being in a pot, the seeds end up forming little seedlings around the tuber, so I'll be able to collect them over time, and plant them throughout the garden in semi-shade. (Cyclamen in the garden (and in the wild) tend to form drifts because of myrmecochory, which is a fancy way of saying that seeds are spread around by ants (which love the sweet coat, then discard the seeds up to 3m away).)

About a year ago I found Cyclamen (Super Series)`Petticoat’ (below) in the nurseries, with pink and white forms. Looking at its propeller-petals, surely it has C. alpinum genes? Tell me, dear reader, do you like it?

Don't eat the tubers! - they are quite poisonous. But cyclamen seeds remove sorcery according to Dioscorides (~50AD) - and you can't get enough of that.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria. (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)