Cyclamen hederifolium planting depth

Roy Herold rherold@yahoo.com
Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:17:44 PDT
Not to beat a dead horse, but I have a couple of other C. hederifolium stories...



Once upon a time, in the early 80s, I had a rabbit that lived for
several years in a hutch in the garden until it met an untimely death.
The ground beneath the hutch was, to put it mildly, VERY well
fertilized. And quite soggy.  I have no idea what the nitrogen content
was, but it must have been off the scale. I proceeded to purchase what
must have been my very first hardy cyclamen, a 'neapolitanum' tuber
from a local garden center (probably wild collected, as they tended to
be at that time). I planted it right in the middle of the spot
previously occupied by the rabbit hutch. The first year I wound up with
a plant a foot in diameter, the next year it was three feet in diameter
with hundreds upon hundreds of pink flowers. I guess that was what got
me hooked on cyclamen. Alas, it perished in a move to a new garden the
next year. Moral of the story? Feed your cyclamen, I guess.



In my subsequent garden, there was a rock wall, several feet high,
built with mortar but with cracks here and there. I had planted
some cyclamen seedlings in the gravel at its base. The next think I
knew, cyclamen seedlings started to appear in the cracks, a couple of
feet off the ground (love those ants!). I figured they would die in
short order, but a couple persisted. It was amazing to see big leaves
and flowers emerging from a quarter inch wide crack every year. I
always wondered what shape the tuber must have taken on to adapt to the
niche between the rocks.



My best C. purparascens to date showed up this year, planted by the
ants in rocks near its parent. One of the plain green 'fatrense' types,
it had leaves that were nearly three inches in diameter. I was amazed.
It thrived in our summer drought, out of the reach of the sprinklers.



--Roy

NW of Boston




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