Authors:
Tuber rough and fissured at maturity, to 15cm diameter, rooting from the lower surface. Leaves cordate, not lobed or angled, but the margin finely toothed, 2.5-14cm long, deep plain green above or with a hastate pattern in grey, cream or silver, this sometimes covering the entire surface. Flowers appearing with the mature leaves, sweetly scented in wild forms, white, sometimes with a pink 'snout', mauve or pink, but rarely red in the wild; petal-lobes oblong to elliptic, strongly twisted, 2-3.7cm long, without auricles, winter to spring. Fruit with pedicel downcurving but never coiling. Greece - Aegean Islands, Rhodes, southern Turkey, Cyprus, eastern Mediterranean, Algeria and Tunisia, in maquis or scrub, or open rocky places, sometimes on old terraces, from sea level to 1200m. This is the florists cyclamen from which many large-flowered cultivars have been developed, but the wild species or the smaller-flowered cultivars are daintier, hardier and more appropriate to the alpine house. The species generally requires frost protection but has succeeded outdoors in some gardens in a sheltered warm site. Requires a summer rest, but the tubers must not be baked. [Pl.135]
