Cyclamen 2011

[John Kitt]

Happy Birthday youngster!!

[Otto Fauser]

David , all my best wishes too,
                                 Otto.

[Gerdk]

Can't the flower colour change according to light levels and irradiation (UV)?

Of course, but I can't compare my one and only plant with another growing at a different place.

Gerd

[David Nicholson]

Many thanks folks.

[Janis Ruksans]

I'm very stupid in Cyclamens. Hear that they can be incresed only by seeds. How you multiply cultivars? Is there some way for tuber cutting? Hope if yes, it is not great secret. Reply to my private mail (   janis.bulb@hawk.lv  ) could be acceptable, too.
Janis

[art600]

Fantastic Cyclamen

I especially like the pure white ones George Bisson and Golan Heights.  Gerd, as I am pastel shade colour blind, Golan Heights looks pure white 

[art600]

I'm very stupid in Cyclamens. Hear that they can be incresed only by seeds. How you multiply cultivars? Is there some way for tuber cutting? Hope if yes, it is not great secret. Reply to my private mail (   janis.bulb@hawk.lv  ) could be acceptable, too.
Janis

Janis

Seed is definitely the main way to obtain new plants.  However, you can be successful with flowering trunks - they swell to develop into a tuber.

[Paul T]

You can also theoretically cut the corms into pieces with flowering points on them.  I've tried this in the past with limited success (but SOME success, so it is definitely possible).  The difficult thing is to stop the cuts from becoming fungused and thereby rotting the corm piece.  I've definitely had a couple of cut pieces survive, but I would be trying it on something you could afford to lose a few times until you perfect it.    Probably much easier to just keep trying from seed, slowly stabilising the characteristics into a breeding line as has been done with so many others.

[Janis Ruksans]

During some of EU projects my and my wife's nurseries once were visited by very international public, between them was young man from Cyprus, who told me that his mother are multiplying cyclamens widely by tuber cutting and promissed to send me some information, how to do it. It was some 5 years ago and I'm still waiting this information...
I allways supposed that Cyclamen tubers has only one growing point from its center forming trunklike formation with buds on its top. I supposed that if it is broken - it will not more form new tuber and old tuber will die, too. Would like learn about this a little more.

I can recommend very good substance for sterilising cutted surfaces. It is charcoal powder. I'm using that from my fireplaces, then I powder it by older coffee-mill and powder broken/cutted surface of tuber/bulb. I used it widely for sterilising cutted surface of Cactus cuttings in my school years (when I grew them - I was then 12-15 old). In that time no fungicides were buyable in former USSR. Later I used this powder to sterilise broken surfaces of Corydalis with perennial tubers and when I cutted bottom plates of Scilla, Ornithogalum, Muscari etc. species. It works very well.

Janis

[johnw]

I allways supposed that Cyclamen tubers has only one growing point from its center forming trunklike formation with buds on its top. I supposed that if it is broken - it will not more form new tuber and old tuber will die, too.
Janis

Janis  - I planted heredifolium here in the early 70's. When I could afford more I plannted some whites too. They seeded about until a very cold snowless and dry winter came in 90-91.  All died. Seven years later one huge leaf came up from the oldest bulb. When digging it I accidentally chopped it in half but it was obvious the growing point had frozen off in that winter and certainly took its time to make a new one.

Keep us posted on your findings.

johnw - very icy.

[Janis Ruksans]

Janis  - I planted heredifolium here in the early 70's. When I could afford more I plannted some whites too. They seeded about until a very cold snowless and dry winter came in 90-91.  All died. Seven years later one huge leaf came up from the oldest bulb. When digging it I accidentally chopped it in half but it was obvious the growing point had frozen off in that winter and certainly took its time to make a new one.

johnw - very icy.

I lost my hederifolium even in greenhouse. May be in same winter. Last winter I lost my graeca - all in greenhouse, well covered. Outside coum were lost, too, bur suddenly found one seedling deep in lilac shrubs.
Janis

[ArnoldT]

Janis:

The ant love to spread Cyclamen seeds about.

[johnw]

Outside coum were lost, too, bur suddenly found one seedling deep in lilac shrubs.
Janis

Janis - C. coum only winters here for a few years then gets killed. Sometime it is long cold winters that get it, sometimes I suspect ice atop. Do you think it is the growing conditions or that is simply not hardy enough? Last year I too found a stray seedling in flower under a rhododendron.

Nina Lambert in upstate New York where winters can be very cold has a strain that is supposedly very hardy. They do not winter here. However she gets lake-effect snow of the very deep variety and I doubt the ground freezes very much if ever.

Enjoying your new book very much. Well done.

johnw

[Natalia]

John, there is a whole grupa cyclamen, akin to C. coum. They grow in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus from the foot of the mountains and at least until 1500.
 These cyclamen are perfect winter conditions in the center and north-west European part of Russia.Last winter at -30 snow in my garden was no more than 3cm. Cyclamen blooming in the spring and thrive - and the adult plants and seedlings.
 I also know a clone of S. purpurascens, which grows in the gardens of my friends in the Urals.These cyclamen survived the severe winter of 2009/2010 year, the Urals were to -40 and very little snow.

Here are photos of flowering cyclamen in my garden.

[johnw]

John, there is a whole grupa cyclamen, akin to C. coum. They grow in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus from the foot of the mountains and at least until 1500.
 These cyclamen are perfect winter conditions in the center and north-west European part of Russia.Last winter at -30 snow in my garden was no more than 3cm. Cyclamen blooming in the spring and thrive - and the adult plants and seedlings.
 I also know a clone of S. purpurascens, which grows in the gardens of my friends in the Urals.These cyclamen survived the severe winter of 2009/2010 year, the Urals were to -40 and very little snow.

Here are photos of flowering cyclamen in my garden.

Natalia  -  In what kind of coinditions do you grow these?  Is there a source for these Caucasian seed?  The Cyclamen Society offers C. coum v. caucasicum but I think maybe they are pollinated too often by regular tender coums and so do not survive.

We have no problem at all with purpurascens here. They seed about freely, even nice silver ones and flower non-stop.

johnw