Plant Talk

Tiny Winter Treasures - Cyclamen Open House at Bouquet Banque Nursery This Weekend

Along with trillium, cyclamen must be the most appealing of flowers...easy, winter-blooming, and even faintly fragrant...Cyclamen have ground-hugging heart shaped leaves, mottled and splashed with shades of white and silver that follow the flowers then linger after they fade.

The flowers are delicate and so reflexed as to look wind-blown, held on slim yet sturdy stems above the leaves. And they spread obligingly about, creating colonies of these sweet little white, purple or pink flowers. And best of all? They bloom now, then go dormant in the summer when so much else is going on. These little treasures are ancient flowers, so long cultivated by man that it's believed they appear in cave paintings. So we've loved them at least for centuries....

Bouquet Banque Nursery in Marysville is home to 100,000 hardy cyclamen - now that's a sight to see in mid-winter. Proprietors Judy and Bill invite you to an Open House, garden tour and basket studio showcase this coming weekend, January 19th and 20th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (to be repeated on February 6, the same hours).

The address is 8220 State Ave., Marysville - call 360-659-4938 for more information/visit www.twigtwisters.com for directions.

 

Cyclamen coum Beats Snowdrops As the Earliest Sign of Spring-To-Come

Don't you love it when snowdrops, those shy, sweetly nodding little bulbs, begin to bloom? It means that in the depths of winter, the spring processional has begun. Starting in January, one kind of bulb after another pokes up through winter-crusted ground to unfurl leaves, stems, and finally flowers.

Bulbs are so inauspicious-looking when planted, really nothing more than knuckly lumps of potential, yet they're the bridge from winter wet and snow to summer sunshine - a bridge that reassures us that we'll cross over ourselves into a fresh, new gardening season.

But even earlier than the heralding snowdrops, you can count on an equally sweet looking and really more dependable flower to brighten winter days.  As I cleared away faded lily stems and the collapsed muck of ligularia on our spectacularly warm New Year's Day, I found tiny Cyclamen coum blooming amid the dead leaves and debris. Shorter than snowdrops and as delicate-looking, they weather the worst of winter to bloom as one year ends and the next begins. Their heart-shaped, marbled leaves are  as showy as the little pink and white flowers. Pure, snowy white cyclamen like the one below are my favorite, for they look so clean and promising flowering away in my still-very-messy winter garden...Cyclamen have the tidy habit of spreading slowly yet persistently to colonize the ground beneath trees and shrubs, then obligingly fade away during the summer so showier flowers can take their place.

These little beauties were gifts from Richie Steffen at the Miller Botanical Garden, so they're probably some special kind of cyclamen - I've long since forgotten their cultivar name, which doesn't mean I appreciate their brave flowering any less....Richie - if you can tell us which these are, we'd appreciate it....