Cyclamen africanum

Dr Ori Fragman-Sapir (March 26, 2006)
Head Scientist
The Jerusalem Botanical Gardens
Giv'at-Ram, 91904
Jerusalem, Israel

Tel. +972-52-4472401, Fax. +972-3-5182842

Please visit our website www.botanic.co.il

Ian & Jocelyn Bell

These are pot grown but will flower equally as well in the open ground. Flowering now in NZ.

Ian & Jocelyn Bell (Apr 2, 2005)
New Zealand

Jim Shields

This is the last flower of the season on Cyclamen africanum, and it is holding on doggedly as long as it can! This plant spends its summers and its winters inside the greenhouse, bone-dry through the summer.

Like most Cyclamen, it is self-fertile, and flowers from one lone tuber produced a whole potful of seedlings.

It looks like a dead ringer for Cyclamen hederifolium. They say the only way to tell them apart is that C. africanum dies outdoors where hederifolium will live. It is certainly more sensitive to both excess moisture in summer and cold in winter than is hederifolium. This year, it started blooming well before the hederifolium in pots (outdoors) did, and it has continued to flower well after the hederifolium had finished.

Jim Shields
in central Indiana

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Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd.
http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA