Cyclamen.

Dear all reading, Today was cleaning out drawers and going through various articles long forgotten and came across the following from Robin L Hansen who lived at the time, December 1994, in a small town of population 453, at the northern end of the Willamette Valley in western Oregon.

The town, Donald is about twenty five miles south of Portland. The soils there are mostly clay or clay loam, highly acidic due to an average rainfall of slightly less than one metre. They have very dry summers and cool damp winters, in essence a cool Mediterranean climate, or zone 7 according to the U S Department of Agriculture climate zone map.

The writer of this 'found again' correspondence, found that they were able to grow the following, though noting the biggest difficulties is the siting of the tubers, as inground and automated sprinkler systems are becoming common place there. ( Much the same as here in Australia ).

Under rhododendrons, Douglas firs, birches, etc are the safest places for the following cyclamen: C. Hederifolium, C. coum, C. cilicium, C. intaminatum, C. graecum, C.purpurascens,C. repandum, C. cyprium, C. pseudibericum, have found these all to be hardy here; there maybe others too, I'm still working on this . . .

This prompted me to remember, that folks often 'overlook' the obvious, as once I did.

Cyclamen, regardless of where one lives, makes a stunning statement of both foliage and flower forms. And if you don't separate them, as; 'this is my cyclamen coum clump', then you are truly blessed and wise.

It took me the best part of a decade to unlearn this technique. The joy of 'seeing' other bulbs coming up and flowering through cyclamen flowers and foiage, only the viewer 'seeing' can describe!

Here now living with more heat in summer than I have ever had before, Cyclamen are making a comeback in my yard; which as yet I am loathe to call a garden. I am not happy with it yet, for is is still young - too young; there needs to be more clumps flowering.

As I'm 'not' into the cytology of the genus, I had better recap for those reading; who are:

Groups of species with similar chromosome numbers and comparable morphology can be readily separated, as follows:

• C. rapandum, C. balearicum, C. creticum (2n = 20, 22 )
• C. cilicium, C. intaminatum, C. mirabile ( 2n = 30 )
  The copyright of the article Cyclamen. in Alpines and Bulbs is owned by Gary Buckley. Permission to republish Cyclamen. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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