Cyclamen 2014

[Anne Repnow]

Bolinopsis, I think you will find that is coum. C.alpinum dosn't usually have any white on the basal blotch, it's a solid dark nose.

Thank you Mark! I bought it as C. 'Alpinum' three years ago ...    No wonder it is so weak - C. coum doesn't seem to thrive in my garden.
This is what it looked like last year.

[Anthony Darby]

Anthony, that cyprium looks like hederifolium album. What are the leaves like? Twice I've had pink hederifolium mixed in with cyprium from the Cyclamen Society seed. Here's the usual cyprium flower

I agree. I had hoped the seed would be a mix from several sources, but they all appear to be the same. Hey ho. 

[johnstephen29]

Something similar happened to me I thought I was getting purpuracens album, but when they flowered the were the normal purple colour

[SJW]

I'm sure the same thing has happened to anyone who has grown plants through seed exchanges . This year I have a cyprium in among a pot of C. graecum ssp candicum seedlings. We do need to differentiate though between human error/misidentification/poor labelling - which is presumably the case with Anthony's hederifolium masquerading as cyprium (which look completely different from each other in flower and leaf) - and the usual diversity you get within a species. With something like purpurascens album, if the donor was growing the parent plant alongside pink flowered purpurascens and they are open pollinated then clearly there's a good chance that the album will give rise to pink-flowering offspring. I noticed at Ashwood Nurseries that their purpurascens album stock plants were covered with a netted frame to keep out any pollinators other than an optimist with a paintbrush. Well, I assumed the netting was to isolate the parent plants rather than just to provide extra shading...

Incidentally, I don't think there are many purpurascens album seed donors out there (it's a relatively rare plant). I've been trying for years to get seed through the CS exchange but it is always in really short supply or just not available - I was lucky last year, for the first time ever I got 5 seeds
 

[Naoto The Zombie]

Hi there!

I sowed some seeds of Bowles Apollo which I purchased at the CS show Wisley last year and some are coming up right now - but the leaves of some look a kind of "pinky" like mirabile (please see the attached pix). Is it normal for Bowles Apollo?

[johnstephen29]

Hi naoto I have heard that the pink colouring is not just found on mirabile, but on other species. Wether this is true or not I don't know, I personally have only had the pink on mirabile.

[Mark Griffiths]

I had a libanoticum seedling a few years old that had pink marbling. Hederifolium also sometimes shows that.

[Mark Griffiths]

Incidentally, I don't think there are many purpurascens album seed donors out there (it's a relatively rare plant). I've been trying for years to get seed through the CS exchange but it is always in really short supply or just not available - I was lucky last year, for the first time ever I got 5 seeds

I've had purpurascens album several times from Cyclamen Society seed - unfortunately never a white form though I have an intriguing pure silver/ pewter form. I've got hopefully one or two seedlings from Jan Bravenboer, fingers crossed. 

[SJW]

I sowed some seeds of Bowles Apollo which I purchased at the CS show Wisley last year and some are coming up right now - but the leaves of some look a kind of "pinky" like mirabile (please see the attached pix). Is it normal for Bowles Apollo?

Be pleased, Naoto! The pink overlay was one of the distinguishing features of the original plant. http://www.cyclamen.org/RegisterPage39.html

[Naoto The Zombie]

Thank you for your answers, guys!

So would I still be able to call hederifoliums with two shields marks on leaves but no pink or red colour "Bowles Apollo", or I can't......? 

[Roma]

I have 2 Cyclamen purpurascens album grown from Cyclamen Society seed sown in December2007.  They are slow growing, were slow to start flowering and only produce one or two flowers a year.  They also go dormant much earlier than the pink purpurascens.  I thought I was going to get seed this year but the seed pod aborted    I got a nice floriferous pink form from the same lot of seed

[Roma]

Cyclamen libanoticum
Cyclamen pseudibericum

[cycnich]

Thank you for your answers, guys!

So would I still be able to call hederifoliums with two shields marks on leaves but no pink or red colour "Bowles Apollo", or I can't......? 

I think Apollo group is the term that is generally accepted these days for all plants such as these and this is what I would label them.

[johnralphcarpenter]

You can't call it 'Bowles Apollo' if it's from seed. Only cultivars that are vegetatively propagated, i.e. cloned, can bear the original cultivar name.

[SJW]

You can't call it 'Bowles Apollo' if it's from seed. Only cultivars that are vegetatively propagated, i.e. cloned, can bear the original cultivar name.

I don't think it is as straightforward as that, Ralph, otherwise, for example, there could only have been one each of the various 'Tilebarn' cultivars or C. coum 'Golan Heights' because cyclamen are propagated from seed and not vegetatively. It's a minefield though! Personally, I tend just to use the species name for plants I raise from seed unless I am absolutely sure that the offspring are near enough identical to the named cultivar seed parent. Of course, to be sure of identity you can buy named plants from a commercial source and if it's a reputable nursery they'll have rogued out the dud seedlings and only sell those plants that conform to type. But isn't this what responsible amateur growers also do?

With Bowles Apollo plants being so many generations removed from the original plant, as Pat says, the convention is to call them 'Bowles Apollo' Group. I do the same for the various silver-leaved heds that have been given cultivar names - seedlings from these I just lump them together as 'Silver Leaf' group because, frankly, I'm not entirely sure how you distinguish between the various plants other than the obvious difference of flower colour. (Silver Cloud, White Cloud, Nettleton Silver etc)