[Joanna Savage]

The first Cyclamen hederifolium flowers are appearing here in Toscana at 300m. This morning I measured 100 mm of rain. That seems an awful lot for so early in Sept. Still, it is very welcome and the ciclameni love it.

[Alisdair]

Alice, Cyclamen do sometimes keep their seed cases on the emerging cotyledons - nothing to worry about! Lucky you to have rohlfsianum germinating....
Here in south-west France, after a very dry hot summer, the rains have been unusually heavy and persistent for the last week or so (and the wine growers are making very pessimistic noises about the vintage, as it's usually warm and dry this month). So our cyclamen - we have C. graecum and C. hederifolium here - are rushing into flower.

[Alice]

Thank you, Alisdair.
I now have four seedlings of C. rohlfsianum. Two of them have leaves now and I noticed cute little corms just below the compost surface. The seedlings survived the flight from London to Athens. Next week they will be planted in their permanent home. I am new to growing cyclamen from seed so I am rather excited.

[Alice]

My C. rohlfsianum seedlings are still alive. Would it be better if I planted them in an area which will get some irrigation over winter or in their permanent position, under a pine, in which case they will have to depend on rainfall alone? We have not yet had any autumn rains and everything is bone-dry.

[Trevor Australis]

I'd be very cautious about irrigating C. rolfsianum in winter. It is v susceptible to over-watering, esp when it's dormant. Most people I know who grow it in soil add extra gravel, sm stones and coarse sand in an effort to give it a very free draining 'dry' conditions. A covering of pine needles probably won't harm it unless the mulch gets too deep for the leaves and flowers to find the way to open air and light.

[SusanIbiza]

Do pine needles make a good mulch generally speaking?  We have a long, very dry summer and unreliable rainfall.  There are thousands of pine trees so an inexhaustible supply of potential mulch is readily available.  Are there any groups of plants which would sulk?

[Alice]

I understand that pine needles have an acidifying effect on the soil, so would be good for acid-loving plants.
We also use a few handfulls here and there as our soil is very alkaline.

[Alice]

Thanks, Trevor.
I am slightly concerned that since my C. rohlfsianum seedlings are still quite small they wouldn't survive if they dried out.

[Umbrian]

I suppose over a long period of time the use of pine needles as a thick mulch could affect the PH of the soil. They certainly help to retain moisture very effectively and are very slow to rot down as is evident under my Cedrus deodara where a thick layer of fallen needles has formed over the years the bottom layer of which is black and always moist. When first starting my garden 14 years ago I used to collect them from the small pineta adjoining the approach road to the house, feeling that anything was better than nothing, and did not notice any ill effects. Only the effort of collecting them and transporting them eventually deterred me as it was a tiring uphill journey

[Alisdair]

Pine needles certainly make a splendid environment for cyclamen seedlings. The photo shows Cyclamen coum flowering this last March, and some Cyclamen hederifolium in leaf, in the pine duff below and around a big long-needled Pinus patula. We have never planted cyclamen there, but scattered cyclamen seed heads among the needles. Now every year there are hundreds more seedlings there, which seem to love the needles, and the other rotting-down leaf material trapped by the needles.

[Alice]

What a sight, Alisdair!
Do you mean to say there were no cyclamen there before you started scattering seed heads?

[Alisdair]

Yup, no cyclamen until we scattered seed.

[SusanIbiza]

Thank you very much for that Alice! Carole and Alisdair.  That information is very intersting.  I am learning such a lot from you all.  We are waiting to be connected to a new water supply over the winter months so we can start on upgrading the garden.  Our tap water is nearly as salty as sea water and is heavily calcified.  Everything rusts very quickly here.  If it doesn't rain, nothing gets watered.  Even so nerius oleanders, viburnum tinus and hibiscus sinensis thrive despite open exposure to strong winds off the sea.  They are as tough as old boots and oleanders and hibiscus flower all through the summer.  I am amazed how well they grow in such conditions.

[JTh]

Not that I believe that we will  ever have such a splendid show of cyclamen like yours, Alisdair, but now I know what we can plant under our pine tree.

[Trevor Australis]

We had a huge Pinus radiata in our garden, now gone, with a deep thatch of pine needles and 'duff' (decomposed needles). We had a pot of Cyc. repandum underneath which dropped its seeds over-board unknown to me. Now the seedlings have spread into a generous colony, not so big as Alisdair's but very pleasing. Looking about we find seedlings in our mown grass 'lawns', in paths and under old camellias. Elsewhere coum and hedrifolium have spread widely and I have planted out seed raised africanum, cyprium, corsicum, libanoticum, pelopponesiacum and pelopps lividum. All seem to be settling quite happily.