Cyclamen 2015

[Johan K.]

Cyclamen alpinum with white flowers

[Mark Griffiths]

lovely Johan, I've found I have one raised from Cyclamen Society Expedition seed which was unexpected.

[SJW]

Young C. elegans (Cyclamen Society seed). I'm not so sure, actually...just a standard C. coum?

[Tim Murphy]

Looks like C. coum, Steve. I've attached two photos of C. elegans with wild provenance for comparison.

[Mark Griffiths]

Steve, I agree it looks like coum - do you have a shot of the nose of the flower?

The leaves also look to rounded.

I've had C.elegans come up as C.coum from Cyclamen Society seed before - I still order it in the hope of hitting the jack pot although it's probably easier to get commercial seed that is true.

[SJW]

Tim, Mark - thanks for confirming my suspicions! Seed exchanges are great but it can be a bit of a lottery...

I do have a couple of pots of C. elegans seedlings of known provenance (one is the 'Reiko' form) direct from a CS member so I'm hopeful of those. The law of Sod decreed that my one mature elegans with an excellent leaf bit the dust a few years ago. 

[SJW]

A couple more in flower at the moment. C. alpinum and a C. coum 'Maurice Dryden' seedling with a faint pink rather than white flower. The latter is sold commercially as 'Blush' but I think I'll stick with C. coum (decent leaf). 

[SJW]

And a foliage photo - pan of young purpurascens from a plant with a good leaf. Germinated June 2013.

[Mark Griffiths]

very nice Steve - question for you - you grow your cyclamen unplunged? Do you stand them on capillary matting? Do you water from below by dunking or by matting? Looks like you use clay pots?

[SJW]

very nice Steve - question for you - you grow your cyclamen unplunged? Do you stand them on capillary matting? Do you water from below by dunking or by matting? Looks like you use clay pots?

Hi Mark. Yes, they're all unplunged at the moment but if I ever get round to buying a decent alpine house...
I have both capillary matting and some large, sand-filled gravel trays. The former is mainly for pots of seedlings and the latter for graecum and rohlfsianum. But I also have pots just standing on the aluminium staging. Ideally, I should water from below by dunking and when I have the time that's what I do, particularly when bringing the plants back into growth after summer dormancy. Often though both clay and plastic pots are watered carefully around the edges trying to avoid soaking the centre of the tuber. (I still lose plants every year through overwatering though!). I do use terracotta pots for plants I want to show and for my largest graecums. The rest are in plastic pots.

[Mark Griffiths]

thanks Steve. I'm starting to move to the idea of watering from the bottom for things like pseudo-ibericum, mirabile, purpuascens and alpinum - they seem to be the ones I get most sudden wilt syndrome on.

I'm reminded of an old alpine grower joke (actually I only know one other)..but it goes like this "I can't get on with watering from below..every time I turn the pot over and start watering through the hole the plant falls out onto the floor".

[SJW]

Hi Mark. Yes, they're all unplunged at the moment but if I ever get round to buying a decent alpine house...

This is the closest I get to a plunge bed at the moment - a couple of window-box plastic troughs filled with sand!

[SJW]

This is the closest I get to a plunge bed at the moment - a couple of window-box plastic troughs filled with sand!

They're perched on the edge of a central raised bed that I use for tomatoes which are planted in the sunken black plastic flower buckets. In the winter these buckets normally have chicory plants growing in them but this year plant pot proliferation has overwhelmed this space.  The problem is it'll soon be time to start the tomatoes again...

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Ants have been working very hard over the years... 

[Maggi Young]

Ants have been working very hard over the years...     

That's our problem - we have no ants ( no idea why) and the BD clearly does not work as hard as the ants would.....