Hi there, possibly! I've had C. colchicum flower quickly, it's always supposed to be much slower than C.purpurascens. Currently I have a few C.purpuracens in flower as it's their season, having C.hedifolium in flower now is early, sometimes you get some in August, but the C.cilicium out now is very very early. I'm not sure what triggers these autumn ones into flower, it may be water but then if there is a lot you get flowers with leaves, if less just flowers. Or it may be day length. If the latter maybe there is a difference in the "day length" they are getting now? Anyway, interesting observation and enjoy your C.purpurascens, it has an incredible scent even though some flower forms are poor.

Here is a link that might be useful: If you are interested in Cyclamen...

Thank you kindly, Mark - I'll keep trying to imagine reasons for the unseasonal/early bloom; it could be that the light cycle indoors triggered the flowering, and having plenty of moisture outdoors has kept them going and spurred the young purpurascens to join in the fun. Maybe they liked the fish emulsion I was feeding them. Hopefully mine will at least turn out to be a reasonably attractive-flowered purpurascens! I have to confess that I've never heard anyone complain about the blossoms of that species before. I do have another several seedlings just in case, one of which is evidently a silver leaf form (it also survived its first cruel winter outdoors, a good sign). I've smelled the species before and have to agree that it's wonderful! My C. cilicium is also nicely fragrant and smells something like honey to me, but its scent is not so pronounced as the purpurascens I've encountered.

Stefan

P.S. When the address for www.inspiringplants.org is typed in my address window, it goes to a blank site! Do you know if there are any problems with the page?

Hi, I hope not, it's my site! Just copied it in again, it's there. it should load reasonably fast as I designed it when I was on dial up. maybe try www.markgriffiths.org ? Try copy and pasting the address, it seems as if I've messed up the embedded link...

Thank you, Mark - it seems futile for me to try (I'd typed the addresses by hand to ensure that no mistakes were made), but I have a feeling that my DSL modem has decided to stop going to your site and it's probably not a problem on your end! A few weeks ago the modem did the same thing with my credit card's web site, and it had to be unplugged and reset in order to make things right once again. However, I remember visiting your pages before - so my memory will have to suffice for the moment. I recall having to do some fiddling with a Geocities address to find the page/pictures of C. purpurascens at the time.

I thought you might enjoy seeing the plant's progress, so I've got a link to a photo of the plant in bloom. Do you think it's a decent flower form? It looks good to me, but I have little else to compare it with.

{{gwi:372073}}.

Stefan

Hi, looks good to me. The bad forms have shorter petals to create a box shaped flower, often compounded by being a strange washed out colour. It seems more common in the wild thankfully!