A couple of Cyclamen queries?

[David Nicholson]

I have a couple of C. hederifolium seedlings (picture below) from a packet of seed from the garden centre which I am feeding and watering. Should I continue to water and feed or will they need a rest period, and if they do need a rest how will they let me know it is rest time?

I also have a pot of C. rohlfsianum seedlings (well to be exact only one has germinated from ten seeds sown). Please, I need to know if I should continue to water and feed, and whether there is a possibility that more could germinate. At present the pot is in the greenhouse, should it remain there or would it be better outside?

[mark smyth]

Resting time is past. Seeds are being self sown now and wouldnt appear, I think, until next spring. I was in a garden today and there were masses of hederifolium in flower

[Diane Clement]

I have a couple of C. hederifolium seedlings (picture below) from a packet of seed from the garden centre which I am feeding and watering. Should I continue to water and feed or will they need a rest period, and if they do need a rest how will they let me know it is rest time?

It's best to keep cyclamen seedlings going as long as possible and then they will build up as big a tuber as possible before they go dormant.  My young seedlings (sown last autumn and the one before) have only just gone dormant, they have been outside in the shade of the house for 6 months.  Yours will probably go dormant very soon and then shortly they will start again.  You will know when to stop if the leaves start to go yellow, but it would be easier to leave the pots outside and not bother with watering artificially.  Then they will just do their own thing.  You can't go far wrong with hederifolium.   

I also have a pot of C. rohlfsianum seedlings (well to be exact only one has germinated from ten seeds sown). Please, I need to know if I should continue to water and feed, and whether there is a possibility that more could germinate. At present the pot is in the greenhouse, should it remain there or would it be better outside?

These are more difficult.  You are probably best keeping them in the greenhouse as they won't stand frost.  Again, with seedlings, keep them going as long as possible.  More seed may germinate if you are lucky, sometimes up to a year after, depending on temperature fluctuations.  When they do go dormant, they are the only cyclamen that needs a totally dry rest.  With adult plants, the standard treatment is to then soak the pots in late summer then don't water again until the buds appear.  I tend to keep to a similar pattern with young plants.  Good luck!


by the way ... should this be in a cyclamen thread, not a bulb thread (as dicots, cyclamen don't make bulbs, they make tubers) sorry to be a pedant 

[David Nicholson]

Diane, thanks for replying, that was just the information I needed.

[annew]

I'll see your tuber and raise you a swolen hypocotyl, Diane, as apparently that is what cyclamen have, biologically speaking. 

[Diane Clement]

OK, Anne, you win, I remember that stuff ...  BUT If a tuber is a swollen stem and a hypocotyl is the bit of stem below the leaves, then presumably a swollen hypocotyl is a type of tuber (in the same way that a square is a type of rectangle). 

But I've repotted so many of them this afternoon to be beyond caring ...
(250 pots of cyclamen, 350 swollen hypocotyls)

[Ian Y]

OK, Diane, we use the term 'BULB' in its widest sense not its botanical one as the heading to keep things simple.
Anyway the more I look at bulbs, corms, tubers,etc the more I think that while we have classic bulbs such as narcissus and classic corms in crocus there are many swollen underground forms that could easily fall into bulb and corm, or corm and tuber in cyclamen.

If plants refuse to stick to the taxonomy that man has applied, shame on them, then there is no way they are going to stick to any of the other rules we lay down.
Jings, that sounds familiar just like this old anti-bureaucrat you all call the bulb despot

So a bulb is a 'bulb' although not necessarily a bulb - got it???

[annew]

Yessir! 

[Diane Clement]

OK I know what you mean.  Its the nurseryman's use of the word bulb to mean anything you can send dry through the post.
 
BUT there is still no way a dicot can ever have a bulb or a corm.  Only Monocots can have those.  But dicots and monocots can both have tubers (or swollen hypo-thingies).

Of course Cyclamen are dicots.  So how many cotyledons do they produce??  (One - they haven't read the books).
    

enough, I better get back to them - still many more of them to repot - whatever they are

[Maggi Young]

Its the nurseryman's use of the word bulb to mean anything you can send dry through the post.

Not exactly!


In the SRGC we have a very relaxed attitude to "bulbs".... i.e. bulbs, corms and tubers are pretty much all included as "bulbs".... not rhizomes or orchids.... but basically anything with a lumpy underground storage organ is a bulb ! There's enough, latin names etc , to confuse folks out there,  particularly beginners, without getting into bulb/corm/tuber etc etc!!

PS. I think I had a swollen hypocotyl once, but the antibiotics cleared it up!

[annew]