Florist's cyclamen, Cyclamen persicum

To my delight, I was given a cheerful red cyclamen plant as a gift from a neighbor last week. I think the indoor Florist’s Cyclamen, Cyclamen persicum, is about as pretty as anything you’ll find in a pot at this time of year.

Florist’s Cyclamen have sweet scented small flowers in an intense range of colors from white to rose-pink, to wine colored or bright, rich red. The flowers are produced on long stems, held upright above the foliage. The attractive heart-shaped leaves have silver marbling on top. The entire plant, when in flower, reaches only about 8 inches high.

A cyclamen plant needs a very bright spot in the home for best growth. And it won’t be too happy in a house heated above 70°F. If the growing conditions aren’t cool enough, the leaves begin to droop and turn yellow. Soon the plant will look so bad that if it isn’t dead yet, you’ll wish it were! I have mine in a bright, cool east-facing window, bringing it out more prominently onto the dining table when I want, but putting it back in between times.

Watering is a bit tricky. The soil surface should be dry, but not so dry that the plant becomes limp. Also, water applied to the center of the tuber can cause it to rot. So here’s what I do: About once a week I sit the pot in a tray of half an inch of water and leave it overnight. Then I return it to its spot in the window. If water collects in the base of the saucer, I tip it out and don’t water again until the soil feels fairly dry.

I feed the plant with a low-nitrogen fertilizer every couple of weeks, cut off spent flowers, and remove any dead or dying leaves with a sharp tug to the stem. With this care, it should continue blooming until April.

Cyclamen persicum follows the common Mediterranean plant pattern of coming into growth in the autumn, growing through the winter and spring and then going dormant in the hot, dry summer. If you want to keep an indoor cyclamen from year to year, you’ll need to recreate conditions as similar as possible to this native environment. Stop watering when the plant stops flowering and let the leaves go yellow and wither. Then put it somewhere cool and dry for the summer. In September (or when you see new growth), start watering again. If no growth shows after you thoroughly water it, wait for shoots to appear before watering again. In the right cool place, it should re-bloom and will get bigger and better each year.

Happy Gardening!