Tag Archives: Cyclamen coum ssp caucasicum

Tikorangi Notes: July 2, 2010

Latest posts:
1) The winter flowering gem, Cyclamen coum ssp caucasicum – well suited to our temperate sea level conditions.
2) It is a funny thing that satire can get more response than a tightly argued piece. The response to this morning’s column published in the Taranaki Daily News on the topic of total public funding for Pukeiti Rhododendron Trust has been both positive and also considerably greater than I would expect from a usual fortnightly column.
3) It may be mid winter, but that does not mean gardening stops and we give our weekly hints on tasks which can be done.

The harbingers of spring - galanthus

TIKORANGI NOTES
The first of the snowdrops, Galanthus elwesii, are now open and the daintier Galanthus S. Arnott are not far behind. These winter joys may be fleeting, but it is hard to find a simpler or lovelier winter picture. That said, we never get snow here. Never. While daytime temperatures in winter can drop down to single digits (as low as 8 degrees Celsius on a bitter cold day), they are interspersed with glorious days like today – bright sun, blue as blue sky and temps around C16. That is not bad for a temperate climate in the depths of winter, especially as it wasn’t preceded by a frost. That is why we garden for the full twelve months of the year here.

Flowering this week: Cyclamen coum ssp. caucasicum

The charm on the winter flowering cyclamen

These winter flowering cyclamen are a delight and over the years we have increased their numbers so that we can use them to carpet beneath the light canopies of large evergreen azaleas (also coming in to flower now) and in open woodland areas. They have a remarkably long flowering season of months but don’t hold on to their foliage very long after flowering and their corms are quite small, so they discreetly disappear amongst the leaf litter when dormant.

Technically these go by the tongue twisting name of Cyclamen coum ssp caucasicum (the ssp stands for sub-species) and the caucasicums are a great deal more successful in our conditions than the straight coum. They hail from a wide area along the western edge of the Black Sea from Georgia southwards through Turkey to Northern Iran, including the Caucasus Ranges, where they can apparently be found growing from sea-level up to 2000 metres. It is the tolerance of sea level which means they will do with us where we don’t get an alpine chill. The Cyclamen Society (based in Britain) have been sending expeditions for years to try and establish the geographic distribution of the different forms of coum but the political instability of the area poses difficulties. The British have a wonderful history, second to none, of intrepid plant hunting and botanical research but they also have a healthy survival instinct. You won’t often see any forms of Cyclamen coum offered for sale, but if you know of somebody with some plants, they are easy to raise from fresh seed.