Cyclamen 2006

[Hans J]

Hi all ,

Here are some pictures of Cyclamen hederifolium from my trip on Corfu in fall .
This is my best found of Cyc. hederifolium –I call it „Corfu Wine“
 
With best wishes

Hans

[Paul T]

Hans,

That is definitely an impressive colour for a hederifolium.  Unlike anything I ever recall seeing before.   Very nice!!

[Anthony Darby]

Fantastic colour form. What a pity cyclamen are very difficult to clone.

[Joakim B]

What a nice coulour You found.
Thanks for sharing
We want to see more of them.

Kind regards

Joakim Balogh Sweden

[KentGardener]

Hans

that is a stunning colour - I enjoy growing cyclamen and have never seen a flower with such a deep red colour in a hardy plant.  I wonder if the offspring will be as good?  Do please keep us informed in future years about the next generation.

Have you a picture of the leaf - I would be interested to see the patern.

thank you for showing us your find.

John

[Hans J]

Hi all ,

here comes some Cyclamen pictures more :

The first is a Cyclamen purpurascens found in the  Alps of Savoyen ( France )
It was the only Cyclamen in this color that I ever have found on all of my visits for Cyc. purpurascens .
This flower reminds me on the plants they are descriptet as Cyc. purpurascens f. carmineolineatum - also found in Savoyen .

The second picture shows also a really rare plant :
Cyc. purpurascens f. album - this is a cultivar bougth from a nursery .
This picture was made in the first year after buying -so it has only few flowers.
In this year the same plant has more than 40 flowers !
I have also a second plant from the same source and I have well pollinatet both plant -now I hope !

With best wishes
Hans

[Anthony Darby]

You seem to be able to find some very nice versions of well known cyclamen Hans. Good luck with your pollination.

[Paul T]

Lovely!!  I do so like Cyc. purpurascens.  Lovely to see the infamous white form.

[Paddy Tobin]

Hans,

As Cyclamen hederifolium is probably the most commonly grown cyclamen in our gardens here, it is not over presumptious of us to imagine we have seen certainly the major part of its colour range because of hybridisation in the garden. However, your C. h. 'Corfu Wine' is an astonishing colour indeed, a great strength and depth of red not normally encountered.

I am also struck by your first photograph. In the garden I find that C.h. quickly self-seed and give a very dense covering, especially where grown as a single specimen in a bed. However, in your photograph it gives just a sparse covering to the ground. Obviously, there are other species occupying the same patch and competition keeps the spread of cyclamen in check. From the photograph it seems like a species of arum might might be sharing the ground.

Looking forward to further photographs.

Paddy

[Hans J]

Hi Paddy ,

It was for me too the first time that I have seen such a color – it was like a lightning .
I have really visit a lot of populations with Cyc. hederifolium ( Italy , Greece ,France ) but never such a color ,sometimes - but rare I have found  white flowering plants .

Here one word to hybrids :
I think we have not hybrids of Cyc. hederifolium in our gardens – thats all selections of the same species –hybrids are only known as X hildebrandtii ( africanum x hederifolium ) or X whitei ( graecum x hederifolium ).

In some areas on Corfu the ground was full with flowers of Cyclamen , but where I have made this picture was it more sunny and open ground and there grows a lot of other plants like :
Scilla autumnale , Urginea maritima , Arisarum vulgare ,Crocus boryi –so it was better for me to make pictures .
I hope this help you a little bit .

With best wishes
Hans

[Tim Murphy]

Hans,

As Cyclamen hederifolium is probably the most commonly grown cyclamen in our gardens here, it is not over presumptious of us to imagine we have seen certainly the major part of its colour range because of hybridisation in the garden.

Except Paddy, that most of the hederifolium in our gardens, like all of the other cyclamen species, derive from a relatively small number of ancestral stock. Certainly with such a widespread species such as hederifolium, I don't think we've seen the half of it.

Hans, I don't think that's quite how Paddy meant his hybridising comment. I think (but am happy to be corrected) that he was explaining that plants of C. hederifolium have cross pollinated with each other, which would expand the gene pool, which would in turn expand the range of variation one would see in cultivated plants. I don't think Paddy was implying that cross pollination was occuring with other species.

I have some experience with the so-called hybrid between graecum and hederifolium and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist. It seems to me that the plants masquerading under the name C. x whitei are simply abberant forms of hederifolium. I grew plant from seed which came to me directly from the source (Jill White) and these would have been produced by actually doing the cross manually - C G-W says in his monograph that the hybrid appears to be sterile, but my seed grown 'x whitei' went on to produce viable seed, which in turn produced seedlings. I think that this 'hybrid' is no more than an odd form of hederifolium.

That flower is wonderful, Hans. I have seen some lovely examples of C. hederifolium on Corfu around Paleokastritsa on the northwest coast with very attractive leaf patterns, but I have not seen anything like the flower in your photo.

[Paddy Tobin]

Hi Hans and Tim,

Many thanks for your comments, both, and they are greatly appreciated.

My apologies for my none-too-precise use of language. As Tim assumed, quite correctly, I really shouldn't have used the word 'hybrid' as it was not what I had in  mind at all. Rather, I should have said 'variations' or 'selections' to more accurately describe the range of colours which occur in a garden situation with a planting of Cyclamen hederifolium.

I started off with what I presumed were the common forms of Cyclamen hederifolium, variations of pink and a white-flowering plant also. Over the years - the white plant is at least 30 years old at this stage - several different 'pinks' have grown from self-sown seed, the result of which is a range of colours and a range of flowering times, all of which make this bed interesting over a longer time.

I did have a patch of Cyclamen coum in this same bed for a number of years but have since moved them. One small patch of C. purpurascens is still there. What is left now is almost all variations on the common C. hederifolium with some purchased forms added over the past few years - grey-leaved, sagittate-leaved, ones with particularly good markings etc. These may cross pollinate in time and add to the range of interesting variation which occurs naturally.

While I find Cyclamen hederifolium, C. coum and C. purpurascens grow with ease in the open garden I find I am not so successful with cyclamen species and cultivars grown under glass. They germinate with ease from seed but the number which re-emerge in the second year is always down on the numbers at the end of the first. Any advice proffered would be most welcome.

Paddy

[Paddy Tobin]

Hans & Tim,

A quick search of computer did not produce the photographs I had hoped for but here are a few of the cyclamen in the garden.

Paddy
Oops! Don't knowwhat has happened to Paddy's pix, they were not showing as thumbnails and the files were "empty" when clicked upon to open.. have removed them to save folk from trying needlessly to see them. Perhaps Paddy can repost them later. I think the files had not been saved  correctly before posting.  Maggi

[Tim Murphy]

Paddy, it sounds like you leave the seedlings in the pot that the seed was sown in for at least the first summer. I always prick cyclamen seedlings out into individual pots at the cotyledon stage.

Seed of all species sown in August/September has germinated well and the seedlings will stay in the seed pot until late Jan/early Feb when they will be pricked out into 7x7x8 cm square pots, using a mix consisting of peat, J.I. No.2, perlite and composted bark (equal measures, parts by volume). All of the species respond very well to this treatment and the time elapsed between germination and flowering is reduced considerably if the seedlings are potted individually early on like this.

[Paddy Tobin]

Tim,

You are a gentleman! Many thanks.

Your text and sequence of photographs make it all so clear. You correctly assumed that I had been leaving my cyclamen seedlings in their seed pot over winter and the following summer.

Looking at your composts, it seems to me that your seed compost is not as open as your potting-on compost; it looks to me more like a peat-based compost, just as I use, and I imagine that when I leave the seedling plants in this over winter, their second winter, it is too wet for them and they consequently rot off and, of course, fail to appear in the following year. Does this sound like a reasonable assumption to you?

I have a number of cyclamen seedling pots at present and must follow your advice and pot them on into a more open mixture early in the New Year. By coincidence, my most successful bed of cyclamen is topped with shredded bark and I find the self-sown seedling settle themselves naturally just under the bark and on top of the soil, so have perfect drainage and are yet protected from conditions above.

Many thanks.

On a separate issue - the photographs I posted yesterday seem not to have appeared correctly for some unknown reason as I posted them in the same way as previously posted photos.

Paddy