Sowing and Growing Cyclamen

Although it is September and many flowers are past there are still some treasures in store such as cyclamen I started growing six years ago.

I purchased two corms - one Cyclamen hederifolium, the other Cylcamen neapolitan. As they were dormant in a plastic bag, I didn't know what colour they were but later found out one was white, one pink. They were planted at the base of a windswept crab apple tree. The ground was full of roots so I covered them with a bucket of home-made compost.

The following spring the foliage began to appear, beautifully marked silver speckled leaves. As the year progressed a few flowers arrived. At the end of August these were followed by seed pods on stems like coiled springs. Apparently in nature when the seeds are ripe the 'spring' uncoils and scatters seed, but I gathered it before this happened and placed the capsules on the sunny kitchen window. Within a few days they were ripe and to my surprise there was quite a lot of seed inside. I decided to sow the seed straight away so sprinkled it on the surface of a large pot, covering it with some sterile sand.

I left the pot in the shade of a laurel bush at the kitchen window and to my amazement a month later small round green leaves appeared. The leaves disappeared and I thought this was the end of the seedlings but on tipping out the pot I found lots of small corms about the size of a small pea. These I planted singly into small pots and left in the shade that year. It was rather interesting to see the difference in the variation in the size of the plants as they all had the same treatment. Further sowings since have shown similar differences!

To accommodate the large number of plants I killed off the grass around the base of the trees in the plantation and planted them there. Each year they are growing larger and make a great feature now they have dozens of flowers, many with slightly different habits and colourings.

I have since read cyclamen prefer dry, shady places but mine seem to grow and thrive nearly everywhere.

I was also given some seed distributed by the Alpine Society - they were of different species, mainly Cyclamen coum varieties. Very few germinated and the ones that did took almost two years, so if possible sow when fresh.

Doreen Moody