Petrocosmea minor & Cyclamen.

The cooler month of Autumn and there are still flowering plants.

A plant imported by one of our members from China, Petrocosmea minor, grown from leaf cutting,

from the mountains of China approx. 3,000 meters this little wonder needs to be kept moist all year,

it is found growing in mossy crevices.

Cyclamen keep on keeping on Cyclamen cilicium above and below a few days later.  Green Ice Cyclamen seed company Holland.

Cyclamen coum silver leaf form below, its not alway's about the flower is it. This is just the one bulb from our dear friend Marg Taras.

Cyclamen cyprium below various markings on the leaves mixed seed, Marg Taras has it labeled as Cyclamen cyprium ES (There will be a couple of this and other Cyclamen to distribute at the next meeting).

Cyclamen cyprium Zonal leaf  below Cyclamen Society seed.

Cyclamen cyprium flower from the plant above.

Cyclamen mirabile from my own seed growing in the garden. I was reading Christopher Grey-Wilson's book on Cyclamen from the Birregurra book shop yesterday when I read about an astonishing piece. I had not realised that there were so many tubers dug up from the wild in the 1960 to 1970. Turkish commercial collectors started a systematic exploitation of bulbs from the wild for the west making this little Cyclamen rare in the wild. Quoting from the book in 1976 the number of Cyclamen tubers exported was 256,000 by 1979 it rose to 1,099,725 by 1982, 2,350,000 and in 1985 6,632,000. The great majority of these tubers were stripped from the wild. Under the CITES agreement of 1986 this mass exploitation was stopped.