How can anything so small be so bewitching? The huge joys of the tiny cyclamen

Everyone grows cyclamen. We start with a gorgeous pot of winter-flowering Cyclamen persicum, which we usually kill by over-watering (memo — no cyclamen tolerates waterlogged soils). Later on, when we get the gardening bug, we grow some of the hardy species that flower prolifically in dry and difficult corners of the garden. Nothing can match the sense of effortless achievement conveyed by an ever-expanding patch of C. hederifolium in autumn or C. coum in winter.

There are 23 species of cyclamen and some of them are very rare: pepper-scented Cyclamen libanoticum exists only on a couple of mountains north-east of Beirut in Lebanon, whereas C. somalense, discovered as recently as 1986, is native to the inaccessible Cal Miskaad mountains of Somalia and has not yet been introduced into Britain.

Cyclamen is a member of the primrose family — a fact not obvious to most of us — but it grows from tubers that can survive the heat and drought of a Mediterranean summer. Many species flower shortly after the arrival of rain in autumn, but others start by growing their leaves, which then form an attractive background for the flowers in spring. Some have a limited natural distribution: autumn-flowering C. cyprium in Cyprus, for example, and spring-flowering C. creticum in Crete. Endemism is the botanical word for the phenomenon.

The first species to be introduced to Britain in the late 16th century was Cyclamen hederifolium, which is widespread in Italy, the Balkans and Greece. It is now naturalised in much of southern England, wherever conditions suit its preference for dry shade. Cyclamen seeds are carried off by ants, which are attracted by the sticky covering. When they have licked off all the sweetness, (thereby rendering it ready for germination), the ants abandon the seed. Opportunist plants of C. hederifolium turn up as much as 300 yards from their parents. ‘Go to the ant,’ said Solomon, ‘consider its ways.’ What did Solomon know about the germination of cyclamen?

One of the surprises of growing cyclamen is that anything so small could be such an eye-catcher. The flowers are seldom more than 4in high, although always produced in great quantities; an established plant of C. hederifolium may bear as many as 100 flowers. The cheerful, nodding flowers have distinctively upright petals, sometimes with an elegant twist. After flowering, the stems of many species coil up like a spring — a curious development that draws the seedpods down to ripen on the tuber, beneath the leaves, where the ants find the seeds and spread them about.

Cyclamen have always been prized by plant collectors and, until recently, millions of wild-grown plants were dug up in Eastern Mediterranean countries and exported to Dutch wholesalers. In 1969, the super-rare Turkish species C. mirabile (its petals have pretty frilly tips) was mistaken for C. hederifolium and almost completely wiped out in the wild. Its fate precipitated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1975 and the eventual listing of all Cyclamen species as plants that may never be collected in the wild.

The leading grower of hardy cyclamen in England is John Massey, who saw the arrival of CITES as an opportunity to grow them professionally in England. He began to collect the plant 50 years ago and set to acquiring every species and distinct form that he could find. Research and experience taught him how to grow them well, although his Ashwood Nurseries near Kidderminster is perhaps even more famous for its hellebores and hepaticas.

A steady flow of gold medals from the RHS bears witness to his success. In 1994, at a Westminster show, Ashwood was awarded the first RHS ‘double gold’ for nearly a century — one for hellebores and the other for cyclamen. It is largely through Massey’s success in cultivating cyclamen that many of the species are available for cyclamen lovers today.

Massey knows the history of every plant in his collection — where its ancestors came from. A form of C. coum with a patch of green, shaped like a Christmas tree, in the centre of its silver leaves dates back to the RHS’s Bowles Scholarship Botanical Expedition to Iran in 1963, collected along the way in northern Turkey. Some of his original stock plants still flourish in the vast glasshouse and polytunnels that he dedicates to improving their range and growing them for sale.

Over the years, Massey has singled out his best cyclamen seedlings (no two are exactly the same) and used them to develop new strains. The day-to-day development of his collection has for the past 10 years been entrusted to his observant and discriminating colleague Hayden Worton. Most of his work focuses on C. hederifolium and C. coum because they are hardy all through the British Isles and the easiest to grow.

Both Cyclamen hederifolium and C. coum have pink flowers and dark green leaves, usually green for C. coum, but marbled with grey on C. hederifolium. Both have fine white forms, sometimes with a pink ‘nose’ to the flowers, as well as darker pink forms. Cyclamen leaves are also infinitely variable in both pattern and shape. C. coum usually has kidney-shaped leaves, but selected forms are almost round. C. hederifolium are normally heart-shaped, but some are much more slender, with arrow-shaped patterns. You have only to plant a couple in your garden to see immense variation among their seedlings.

Cross-pollination between chosen parents also leads to new flower shapes and dependable uniform colours when grown from seed. C. hederifolium ‘Ashwood SilverRose’ is a new strain with silver leaves and dark-pink flowers. Most seedlings will flower in their third year, but Massey will not release a plant until it has flowered and he can see that it is true to type. A vagrant bumblebee in his breeding house can undo a whole season’s work.

Cyclamen coum and C. hederifolium are hardy everywhere and C. cilicium and C. repandum survive outside in much of southern England. Massey also grows C. graecum, C. intaminatum, C. purpurascens and C. pseudibericum in snug corners of his West Midlands garden. Almost all the others prefer an unheated greenhouse, although the most spectacular require a frost-free glasshouse, including robust C. africanum from the coast of Algeria and rugged C. rolfsianum with angular leaves and large flowers from Libya’s Jebel Akhdar mountains.

Massey grows some of his Cyclamen hederifolium collection under a tree, interplanted with polypodium ferns, but cyclamen are quickly smothered by over-exuberant perennials. The usual advice is to grow them on their own, preferably under a deciduous tree where they will benefit from the annual mulch of fallen leaves. There is one exception to this: C. coum flowers in late winter at the same time as snowdrops and the two combine most beautifully.

Planting cyclamen tubers calls for a strong heart because, generally speaking, they should be placed only just beneath the surface of the soil or actually on top of it. Nevertheless, they quickly find their correct level and settle in. The tubers are small when young, but expand with age. A venerable old specimen of C. hederifolium can live up to 100 years and may have a tuber the size of a dinner plate.

Find out more about Ashwood Nurseries in Kingswinford.

This feature originally appeared in the October 7, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.