On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 09:22:23 GMT, Pam Moore wrote:

Oops, Franz! My touch typing is less than perfect!

Considering your eye problems, a mistake like "ubder oine trees"
is a non-issue. I've always wanted to sit ubder an oine tree and
srinl eibe eko;r ;odyrmomh yp yjr ;omyromhs;rd domh/

David, thanks for that. Yes purpurascens was I think the one that
Lady Skelmersdale suggested and I bought one, with disappointing
results, as also my seed sowing has been. Perhaps the Italian sun,
and large numbers of plants are what I need.

Cyclamen europaeum (= C. purpurasens) is native over a a fairly
wide swathe of Europe, from northern Italy to somewhere up in
Czechoslovakia. The forms from around Lake Garda in Italy have
some notoriety among cyclamen enthusiasts as being "distinctive."

At a guess, your lack of success with C.e. (C.p.) is due to (a)
receiving plants and seeds derived from other, less well-scented
localities and (b) the fact that it's a ******* to grow in a mild
climate. Here in Victoria, our climate is simply too mild, too
uniform for it, too cool in summer and too warm in winter, and
the dry summers don't help any either. My pathetic few specimens
are carefully sited in a bed that gets summer water, in the
deepest shade. One of them is actually flowering as I write. One
flower, that is. Wow. Yippee. Big deal. I want sheets of them!

But otoh I have read accounts from Chicago, where the climate is
an unspeakable continental horror of steaming hot summers, fierce
wind storms, and intensely cold, snowy winters, and where most
cyclamen species are a writeoff. C. europaeum does very well
there in the open garden. As an opera goer might say, boo hiss.

(My facts may be a little muddled, but you can check up on me in
any good book on cyclamen.)

My only advice: move to Chicago. Take your wooly underwear along;
you'll need it.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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