Last week I took a look at some of the autumn-flowering bulbs you can plant now for sparks of vibrant colour in just a few weeks. Now I want to look at a plant I missed last week for the simple reason that it really deserves a post of its on.
There are about 20 species of cyclamen in the wild and just one, Cyclamen persicum, which is not hardy, has been used to produce both the large-flowered Christmas pot plants and the useful small, often fragrant, plants for autumn pots that will soon be filling the outside covered benches at Nags Hall along with pansies and violas for autumn pots and baskets.
There are two other, very tough, cyclamen species that are generally easy to grow and often naturalise and spread in gardens. One flowers now and the other in early spring. I will deal with the autumn-flowering Cyclamen hederifolium first. If you have this in your garden you will probably already have some pink or white flowers poking through the soil. If not, then this is a plant you really need to add to your plot.
It is best to buy them as growing plants in pots but you can also buy them as dry tubers in packs. It used to be the case that these might have been dug from the wild but that is no longer the likely so you can be sure that they have been grown from seed on a nursery.
This cyclamen is 100% hardy and will grow in sun or shade, even the dense shade under trees. The flowers appear from the bare soil in late July into August and September and then the foliage appears. According to the plant, the weather and the soil moisture, the leaves may appear after or with the flowers. The foliage is rather like ivy but can be dark green, marvellously marbled with silver or grey or almost silver and it is not damaged by cold. It dies back in May and the soil is bare for a few months. It tolerates any soil, with a slight preference for alkaline soils, and puts up with dry soil but not waterlogging.
The great plantsman E A Bowles wrote ‘You get as good value year in and year out from (C. hederifolium) as from any one plant I can recall.’
The flowers can be pink or white.
After a few years the plants usually produce young seedlings and these can be moved to new areas or left to form colonies.
The advantage of buying growing plants in flower and leaf is that you can select the plants you like best, either based on flower colour or leaf pattern.
If buying tubers, plant them about 5cm deep and about 30cm apart. They prefer a soil with plenty of organic matter and it is good practice to mulch with fine bark to keep weeds down and to help keep the flowers clean when they appear through the soil.
Because they thrive in shade under trees they are very useful for planting under hedges where little else will grow.
The other easy cyclamen is C. coum. It differs in that the plant is even shorter in habit in leaf and flower and the flowers do not open until January or February, making them a charming partner for snowdrops and early crocus. The flowers can be white or various shades of pink and magenta. It is just as easy to grow and also thrives in shade. You can buy the dry tubers now or buy plants in bloom in winter.
Both are beautiful and will look after themselves and get better every year.