Cyclamen 2011

[Roma]

House plants this time.
Cyclamen rohlfsianum which live on a south facing windowsill in an unheated spare bedroom under a Velux window with no blind.

The leaves belong to Cyclamen persicum from those developed by Wye College many years ago and not available for a long time.  The flowers are pure white and scented.

[Hans A.]

Superb Cyclamen Roma! Like especially your C. rohlfsianum!

Here also a few Cyclamen started to flower - C. africanum, C. graecum and C. rohlfsianum.
A seedling I was very curious to see in flower was a C. rohlfsianum which in difference to all the other plants of the species I grow (and I have seen) has completly green leafstalks without any hint of red - something which could indicate it is an Albino (like Cyclamen coum 'George Bisson' for example). Today it opened the first flower, it is not white but much darker I would expect -the contrast is not bad at all.
Here a picture of the seedling and a 'normal' plant.

[ian mcenery]

My rohlfsianum isn't through the ground yet but these are coming along

C intaminatum
C confusum
C clilicium album
C africanum
and C hederifolium in the garden

[WimB]

Guff and Gerd,

those very dark hederifoliums are just 

Roma and Ian,

wonderfull Cyclamens you're growing.


I've sown some Cyclamen two years ago and one of them was C. hederifolium 'Stargazer'. A couple of weeks ago I had the first flower on one of its seedlings and it is gazing at the stars too 

Also some pictures of the variation in leaves of the C. coum seedlings from two year ago.

[David Nicholson]

Grown from seed sown September 2008 and flowering for the first time. Unlike me I didn't keep a note of the seed source but it must have been from one of the Exchanges.

Not sure how I should describe it but the seed was labelled Cyclamen mirabile forma niveum 'Tilebarn Jan' so I presume it should be Cyclamen mirabile ex f. niveum 'Tilebarn Jan'. Is that right please?

Just a hint of pink on the nose.

[annew]

What a beautifully elegant flower, David.

[johnw]

Not sure how I should describe it but the seed was labelled Cyclamen mirabile forma niveum 'Tilebarn Jan' so I presume it should be Cyclamen mirabile ex f. niveum 'Tilebarn Jan'. Is that right please?

David - That seems like a sensible way to record the origins of your plants.

I have to wonder sometimes what it is we get as seed from the CS labelled with a cultivar name. For instance E.A.Bowles; how many generations might the seed be from the original 'E.A.Bowles' ? No wonder we get such varied progeny! Seems to be fraught with the same problems as the Hellebore scene.

johnw

[Pascal B]

John, that depends on how throrough the donor has selected the resulting seedlings. Most Cyclamen cultivars don't come 100% true from seeds anyway and only the seedlings that have retained the traits of the original cultivar are allowed to carry the cultivar name. If the cultivar is old and can only be propagated by seeds then you can only hope and pray that the donor knows how to preserve a cultivar. If the seeds are "ex -> ex -> ex" and not selected well in the process then the cultivar name connected to the seeds is basically useless. My experience is that most growers hardly document the origin of the plants they grow so I have little faith in such seeds being true.

Same for wild collection numbers. Only the first generation seed as a result of self-pollination may carry the collection number with "ex."  in front of it. For second or third generation seeds it has lost its value, certainly if open pollinated with related species in the vicinity. That's why I always try to get plants closest to the origin and prefer wild collected plants or vegetative propagations of the original cultivar.

With Cyclamen mirabile "Tilebarn Jan" the cultivar allows for the faintest pink in the white flowers so it is my guess it might still carry that cultivar name?

[daveyp1970]

Very nice David,lovely flower.

[johnw]

Pascal - I agree, one wonders how ruthless donors are at culling out the rogues whilst retaining the cultivar name.  I hope they have made notes on their labels, oftentimes they harvest seed from leafless plants!  BTW it has been years since any EAB seed has produced anything remotely similar.  This could explain why coum v. caucasicum has never produced a hardy coum; open-pollinated seed can be a horror and it's unlikely anyone - aside from a serious nurseryman/specialist would take the time to do a conntrolled self-pollination.

johnw

[David Nicholson]

Thanks folks. It seems, according to Grey-Wilson (2002), that C mirabile forma niveum is pure white, so I'm happy, I think, with my 'ex' on the label.

[Pascal B]

David, your plant perfectly illustrates why any taxonomic recognition of flower color rarely if ever is useful and why I am not that keen on CG-W as taxonomist as he tries to formally describe a horticultural trait. So many plants occur in pink & white forms and anything in between that I don't see the point in separately naming the extremes. Only if the color is either one or the other it would make some sense because then it is the result of a single gene switch and not one of the phenotypes. And even then it has little taxonomic value.

The Cyclamen society on their website state: A pure albino form C. mirabile forma niveum Grey-Wilson & J. White, exists and is in cultivation under the cultivar name C. mirabile 'Tilebarn Jan'.
If I read this I shake my head because this line in itself is superfluous as "forma niveum" already implies that it should be white... !!! And apart from that, albinism is generally referred to as a lack of pigmentation in the skin and hair in animals, not in plants. In botany "albino" and "alba" are sometimes mixed but they are taxonomically not the same and with plants the use of the term alba is more appropiate. So an albino form of a white forma......doesn't make sense now does it.....?

The Tilebarn Nursery website however state for "Tilebarn Jan": A white flowered form of C. mirabile sometimes with a pink blush to the nose of the flower.
So according to them "Tilebarn Jan" is white or white with some pink. Now I am not sure how the cultivar is registered but if the main feature is a white flower I don't see the point in either the cultivar name or the forma niveum.

The shape of the flowers in Cyclamen often varies and in theory you could end up with several different white cultivars so what makes "Tilebarn Jan" unique among the white forms? Looking at your plant David the petals of the flower seem broader than the plant of the Tilebarn Nursery so I think yours is even an improvement on the original cultivar. Very attractive! If you could combine it with the leaves of "Tilebarn Anne" or "Tilebarn Nicholas" you would have a winner...

[Gerry Webster]

Cyclamen graecum

Both plants derive from a seed collection made in the Peloponnese by Ronald & Erna Frank.

[David Nicholson]

Nice graecum Gerry.

Pascal, I'm with you all the way on this one. My plant can't be niveum, it has a little pink on the nose. It can't be 'Tilebarn Jan' because it wasn't vegetatively propagated. If I was a Nurseryman maybe it would be called Cyclamen mirabile 'Dave's Form' Highly likely my plant will never be vegetatively propogated so perhaps I should label it simply as Cyclamen mirabile and just regard it as a rather nice form?

[Pascal B]

It can't be 'Tilebarn Jan' because it wasn't vegetatively propagated. If I was a Nurseryman maybe it would be called Cyclamen mirabile 'Dave's Form' Highly likely my plant will never be vegetatively propogated so perhaps I should label it simply as Cyclamen mirabile and just regard it as a rather nice form?

David, not necessarily true. One of my best friends is taxonomist and co-author of the International Code of Nomenclature of Cultivated plants. Contrary to what I thought he told me that cultivars CAN be propagated by seeds as long as the traits that defined the original cultivar are still present. Cultivars are plants or a group of plants that are selected for specific and unique traits. If the seedlings of the original cultivar are identical in appearance to the parent and have maintained the characteristics that defined the cultivar it is allowed to maintain the cultivar name for the seedlings.

BUT....., that means anyone propagating a cultivar by seeds must know what defined the cultivar and select only those seedlings that have the cultivar characteristics. And that is where it often goes wrong with amateur growers. Cyclamen cultivars rarely come 100% true from seeds so it asks for discipline, the willingness to care for the cultivar name and not being afraid to select. From a batch of C. mirabile "Tilebarn Nicholas" I have 23 seedlings coming up in their second year, only 3 can be regarded as "Tilebarn Nicholas", the rest is without the pinkish zone or has very little pink. The pink zone is however a unique feature so I can understand why it has been selected as a cultivar. In case of "Tilebarn Jan" I can't really see the point as it is just a white or whitish form send to Tilebarn by Jan Ietswaart....

Saying that, all my mirabile are pink and when I look at your white one I definitely will buy some seeds of it from Bravenboer, it is really nice.