CYCLAMEN. 
tioned and well-liking, of a delicate and delicious warm rose-pink 
with a base of intense crimson. It is distinguished from C. eypriwm 
by the leaves, which are never lobed and gashed ; from C. graecum 
and C. persicum by their lack of any horny margin. In cultivation 
it should have a warm place under the outskirts of some small fine 
bush such as Berberis Wilsonae, in full sun and with abundance of 
lime. It is not invariably easy to keep pleased. 
C. neapolitanum flowers in autumn, and its leaves are very 
variable in size and shape; typically they are exactly like some ivy- 
leaf, rather long from base to point; they are dark and waved and 
marbled, while the beautiful flowers begin to appear before the hey- 
day of the foliage, and have the amplitude and grace of C. persicum’s, 
in varying shades of pink to white, and with an intense, not quite 
bifurcating spot of crimson at the base of each segment. The plant 
is of delicate beauty, and extreme freedom in flower; making solid 
clumps of soft flesh-colour or carmine in an open, sunny gravel path, 
no less than thriving as heartily, if not with such condensed ferocity 
of floriferousness, in places not so inhumane. 
C. persicum can always be grown out of doors in a warm and 
sheltered spot, where, among bushes in tempered climates, it becomes 
more glorious than the rest in stature and size of bloom through late 
summer, winter, and spring. Old greenhouse corms can there be 
thrown away; but they usually have the fat memories and the fat 
habit of their former home, and are neither graceful nor happy in 
wild corners. It is best then to get seed of some good simple strain 
—but not, at any cost, of the huge, highly trained, and comparatively 
coarse florist forms, which have wholly sold the birthright of grace 
for a mess of manure, and the stalled. ox of hothouses. Let a plainer 
kind be sought and sown, and its young corms put out betimes in a 
cosy corner, and C. persicum will outdo nearly all its lesser kia. There 
are various wild varieties, including the smaller-flowered autumn- 
blooming C. p. Mindieri from the volcanic cliffs of Aegina, with 
different and aitogether smaller habit. And C. persicum itself some- 
times takes refuge under the name of C. macrophyllum, Sieber. 
C. pseud-ibericum is most obscure, and may possibly be but a 
synonym for the ponticum variety of C. ewropaewm. It has heart- 
shaped leaves rounded at the point and at the lobes, edged with horny 
membrane, intensely green on the upper surface, and marbled with 
blotches of silvery white. The flowers appear in spring, pale violet- 
pink to a paler base where there is a spot of black-violet to each seg- 
ment ; they vary, however, like all Cyclamen, in colour and depth of 
tone; but excel the rest in their pre-eminent sweetness. 
256 
