The small-flowered varieties of tender Cyclamen persicum are as pretty as anything you'll find in a pot for indoor colour – their white, crimson and magenta colours are wonderful running down the middle of a table and spread around window ledges. In its wild Mediterranean habitat, C. persicum grows in deciduous woods, or you might find it more out in the open, with its tuber hidden under rocks and just the leaves and flowers poking into the light – to replicate this indoors, the pots need to be kept cool and out of direct sunlight.
Hardy garden Cyclamen coum is also fantastic – at Perch Hill, we have it in carpets and it’s almost as lovely in leaf through the autumn as it is in flower in early spring. The pink flowers are one of the first signs that the year is no longer moving away from us, but that we are now at the start of something new. Along with early snowdrops and aconites, the miniature flowers can’t help but lift winter-dampened spirits, and the three together, cut and arranged in a small glass, is cheer-giving.
With C. coum the new foliage comes first, well before the flowers, usually appearing in October, hovering above the coppery autumn fall of deciduous leaves. These are followed in December to March by the flowers, like miniature turbans, their petals reflexed right back to the stem. This is a different pattern from the autumn-flowering species, Cyclamen hederifolium, which flowers in late summer with leaves following quite close behind and staying fresh and carpet-like in autumn and on into the winter. Cyclamen hederifolium and Cyclamen purpurascens are also good hardy species for outdoor planting.
