"Red" (Dick Cavender) is gardening near Portland, Oregon, where I also live. It is not unusual for Cyclamen hederifolium to survive for decades in the Pacific Northwest and to form very large tubers (not corms or bulbs). I suppose we lack some predators that would attack them in other parts of the world, though the introduced eastern gray squirrel sometimes does. Our dry summers, augmented by the fact that many people here grow them near or under conifers, may also add to their longevity. They self-sow freely and soon appear in adjacent lawns, where they will persist if no "weed and feed" products are used.
When I moved to my new garden 3 years ago I was faced with three monstrous Douglas firs near the road frontage, so I underplanted them with C. hederifolium tubers that I dug up in my old garden. Some of them were about 20 years old and 8 inches (25 cm) across, the size of a luncheon if not dinner plate, and all survived the transition. I marked the white-flowering ones to take along to get a nice color mixture. I also brought some Cyclamen graecum tubers, which are more spherical, that were about 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter and put them in the new rock garden. Cyclamen coum tubers also moved well. Our correspondent Robin Hansen operates a nursery on the Oregon coast that is a good source of Cyclamen tubers if you want to get a head start on them in your garden. Fresh seed germinates better than stored seed, but stored seed retains some viability and is worth a try if you are patient with it. I recently had a report of C. graecum seed from a very long-stored seed bank (stored frozen) that was germinating. At 09:50 AM 12/24/2014, you wrote: >Have you counted the number of flowers on one of these monsters? > >They are growing in St Paul, Oregon, between Portland and Salem. > >Diane Whitehead >Victoria B.C. Canada > > >On 2014-12-24, at 7:49 AM, occidentale wrote: > > > I don't want to brag but we have C. hederifolium corms as big as > dinner plates _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list Alpine-l@science.uu.nl http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
