Just finished tidying up in the garden, preparing for winter, never a particularly happy activity but you do get to see how much things have grown.And..are still growing. The rains means that the roses are back in bloom and the fushias are flowering again and growing rapidly. I’ve had to cut back the fushias today just so we can get out the back door and back gate. It also probably explains why they stopped growing and flowering in the summer, they were simply too dry..so a mental note to water them next summer and be ready with the hedge trimmer!
On the constructive side (although I do like to see the tidying up as constructive too) I’ve just created a cyclamen bed. There is an odd corner, about two and a half feet square. Walls on two sides, a fence on the other. The bed is raised by retaining wall on the fourth side. Previous occupants, one climbing rose and a Clematis “The president”. Also a veronica, a silene and aubrietia. The soil seems to be clay and sand. The result of the lack of light is that the “alpines” are very straggly. So they are out (into pots for possibly planting elsewhere in spring), compost added with a number of cyclamen. I’m trying a few C.purpurascens, some selected C.coum, a C.repandum ssp repandum (I have very few) and one C.graecum seedling as an experiment. Interestingly amongst the C.cilicium, there is a pure white one. These are quite common now but I’m not sure how it got there. I have a recollection of having a pot of C.cilicium album seedlings that were all pink, maybe this was from that batch? Strangely I don’t think I have any other C.cilicium album, I lost my adult plants in pots. I was thinking about this earlier, and remembered that from four dried “C.hederifolium” corms bought dry in the mid 80s I had got two C.cilicium and two C.mirabile. The C.mirabile are still with me, the C.cilicium are long gone. Perhaps they don’t like pots or simply not so long lived?
I’ve taken pictures and am about to produce new webpages for C.africanum (I’m waiting for the leaves to photograph), C.cilicium and C.mirabile. I’ll do a blog post when they are ready.
On the subject of pictures, something odd happened the other day. I decided to use google images as a way to finding interesting cyclamen sites. So I put in the names of a few species. The one image caught my eye. It was one of my pictures. It had a company’s logo stamped on it. Then I found another..then another. I’ve complained and had an abject apology. I’ve had a few people ask for images in the past, mainly journalists and we always sort something out. I probably would even allow commercial companies to use them for a small fee to help with my hosting costs. But for a company to take the images to use them for their catalogues and even stamp their logo on it is just plain….naughty.
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