Use these mainstay winter flowers to decorate your home and patio during the holidays

What a journey we’ve made in growing cyclamen as florist and nursery crops in the past 40 years.

They’re now mainstay winter bloomers that we use to decorate our homes during the holidays and our patios into early spring. None of that would have been possible with what we had available to us when our parents and grandparents were learning to garden here in the Southwest.

Cyclamen grow from corms (bulb-like structures that form beneath mature plants). But it’s difficult to get a corm to sprout and grow vigorously, and if that were the only way we could have these handsome plants we’d still be stuck at the starting line.

Hybridizers have developed some really great types that can be started from seed. They produce a rich assortment of flower colors – shades of red, pink, white and violet, crowning leaves that look like grayish-green jewels. Many of the flowers are two-toned, and many are ruffled. The seed-grown plants grow quickly and vigorously, and they mature uniformly, all essential for a profitable greenhouse crop.

The one thing that is critical for success with cyclamen is a cool temperature.

That’s why they bloom in late fall and winter, and that’s why we use them to adorn our entries and patios. We grow them in pots and baskets so we can leave them outside most of the time, bringing them in only when temperatures are expected to drop into the 20s. And then we take them right back outside as the freeze fades.

It was 15 or 20 years ago that you started hearing the phrase “hardy cyclamen.” That made it sound like we could plant them into the garden alongside pansies and pinks. However, when we started asking the breeders what they meant by that term they started to waffle, finally admitting that a solid, hard freeze would be more than the plants could handle. So, frosts and light freezes, yes. Hard freezes, nope.

If you’re enjoying a cyclamen indoors this season, be sure it doesn’t dry out to the point of wilting. That’s the quickest way possible of shortening its productive life in your house, so keep it moist at all times. Not wet, but certainly not dry. And keep it out of hot drafts. Don’t position it near the heat vents or beside the fireplace. Opt, instead, for a bright, cool windowsill.

My dad was a PhD botanist and range management specialist at Texas A&M. He worked with Dr. Liberty Hyde Bailey of Cornell on several occasions in Bailey’s later years, and I have Dad’s personal desk copy of Bailey’s Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (MacMillan Co., 1913) in which he said about cyclamen, “There is no winter-flowering subject of as much value for duration in bloom, variety of coloring or wealth of color.” Remembering that in 1913 poinsettias had not even started to become holiday staples, cyclamen were the show flowers of Christmas.

That might lead you to wonder if you could grow your own cyclamen from seed. The publication Greenhouse Management has details for the commercial grower that may give you more appreciation for what your favorite nursery or flower shop (and their supplier) has been through to get cyclamen to you this season.

Their experts say it’s going to take upwards of 22 weeks from the time of sowing seed to finish “grow time.” That’s almost half a year. And during that time, which would be starting back in July or August, the temperature would need to be kept at 62F to 64F. That’s why young cyclamen are started in cooler parts of America.

By that same token, when your cyclamen’s bloom time has come to an end in late March or April, and when you’re looking at the foliage thinking how attractive even it is, don’t be goaded into trying to keep it through the hot Texas summer. Enjoy the plant as long as it’s an asset, but don’t be afraid to send it to the compost once it plays out.

Now you know the true story of the plant with the upside-down flowers and why you’ll want to include some in your life this winter.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 pm and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 am. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.

This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 5:30 AM.