I have a confession to make: There’s a secret plant cemetery in my yard…a place where only Stephen King could find inspiration. Everything I’ve planted there, including many promising perennials passed over the fence from my favorite neighbor, have inexorably withered and vanished.
A cluster of pale pink hardy cyclamen (center) thrives in the dry shade of a dogwood tree.
Photo Credit: Sarah E. Smith
Hardy cyclamen corms, like this one found growing under Douglas firs and red alders in a state park in Portland, OR, can get as large as a dinner plate!
Photo Credit: Sarah E. Smith
Make sure the corm’s hairy growth faces up in the planting hole.
Photo Credit: Sarah E. Smith
The perp? A Norway maple whose dark canopy and mega-roots create a subtle but relentless desert of bone-dry shade. Never mind the repeated additions of rich compost and manure. Never mind the soaker hose. Never mind all the futile ministrations of gardening’s version of a helicopter parent. Impatiens, dead. Japanese iris, dead. Hardy geranium, dead. Rhododendron, dead. Hellebore, ready for the ICU – stat!
But one day, my generous, optimistic neighbor – the embodiment of a never-say-die attitude – offered me a clump of hardy cyclamen: Cyclamen hederifolium. Cyclamen is a paradox: While it likes shade, it won’t tolerate soil wetness and bad drainage. Instead, it flourishes in competitive, dry summer settings under shrubs and trees where few blooming plants will grow. It’s especially pleased with little or no summer rain, which means the plant’s ideal for the Pacific Northwest.
It’s been a year since my neighbor bestowed her cyclamen upon me, and guess what? That delicate plant with the pink autumn blossoms and gorgeous, silver-patterned leaves – so striking that some people grow it for the foliage alone – is tougher than an NFL linebacker. Hardy cyclamen doesn’t just tolerate dry shade, it thrives on it. It celebrates with crazy, curly seed heads that coil down to the soil like springs. It spreads into drifts and bears leaves that defy expectations: New generations’ foliage can be either heart-shaped or triangular with an endless array of green and silver designs.
The butterfly-like, 1-inch flowers, which emerge in late August and continue for up to two months, nod on 4- to 6-inch stems. Besides the range of soft pinks, there’s also a white-flowered form. And one more no-fuss virtue: Cyclamen tends to be untroubled by insects or diseases.
Once I became aware of this plant, I began to see it in unexpected places – even naturalizing deep in the Oregon woods. When I left the trail and climbed over a log to see one up close, I got a surprise. I had read how the plant’s tuber-like underground structure, called a corm, could grow to the size of a dinner plate over many years. And this one – with a profusion of flowers erupting from its side – had grown to the size of a small tree stump! Yet it was smooth and dark brown, almost like a Portobello mushroom.
After I stumbled across that demonstration of vigor and utter independence from human nurturance, I sprang for a half-dozen corms from a mail-order nursery catalog. By this time next year, the cemetery in my yard will be headed for the compost pile.
