Cyclamen cyprium is a perennial

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...

 growing from a tuber

Tuber

Tubers are various types of modified plant structures that are enlarged to store nutrients. They are used by plants to survive the winter or dry months and provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing season and they are a means of asexual reproduction...

, native

Native plant

Native plant is a term to describe plants endemic or naturalized to a given area in geologic time.This includes plants that have developed, occur naturally, or existed for many years in an area...

 to woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

 at 300–1200 m (984.3–3,937 ft) elevation

Sea level

Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...

 in the mountains of Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

. It is the national flower

Floral emblem

In a number of countries, plants have been chosen as symbols to represent specific geographic areas. Some countries have a country-wide floral emblem; others in addition have symbols representing subdivisions. Different processes have been used to adopt these symbols - some are conferred by...

. Cyclamen persicum

Cyclamen persicum

Cyclamen persicum, the Persian cyclamen, is a perennial growing from a tuber, native to rocky hillsides, shrubland, and woodland up to above sea level from south-central Turkey to Israel and Jordan. It also grows in Algeria and Tunisia and on the Greek islands of Rhodes, Karpathos, and Crete,...

and Cyclamen graecum

Cyclamen graecum

Cyclamen graecum is a perennial growing from a tuber, native to southern Greece, southern Turkey, and neighboring islands and prized for its variable leaf forms, which include some of the most striking of any cyclamen....

are also found on Cyprus, but are not endemic.

Description

Leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are heart-shaped with coarsely toothed edges, green variegated with blotches of silver above and purple beneath.

Flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s bloom in autumn

Autumn

Autumn is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter usually in September or March when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier....

 to winter

Winter

Winter is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.-Meteorology:...

, and have 5 upswept petals, white to pale pink with a magenta blotch near the nose. The bases of the petals curve outwards into auricles

Auricle (botany)

In botany, an auricle is a small ear-like projection from the base of a leaf or petal....

.

After pollination, flower stem

Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaves, inflorescence , conifer cones, roots, other stems etc. The internodes distance one node from another...

s curl, and seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s are borne in round pods

Capsule (fruit)

In botany a capsule is a type of simple, dry fruit produced by many species of flowering plants. A capsule is a structure composed of two or more carpels that in most cases is dehiscent, i.e. at maturity, it splits apart to release the seeds within. A few capsules are indehiscent, for example...

, opening

Dehiscence (botany)

Dehiscence is the opening, at maturity, in a pre-defined way, of a plant structure, such as a fruit, anther, or sporangium, to release its contents. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. Structures that open in this way are said to be dehiscent...

 by 5 flaps when mature.

Cyclamen ×wellensiekii Iets. is a hybrid obtained in 1969 in the Netherlands between this species and Cyclamen libanoticum

Cyclamen libanoticum

Cyclamen libanoticum is a species of flowering plant in the family Myrsinaceae. It is native to a small area in the mountains of Lebanon northeast of Beirut at 750-1,400 m elevation...

– the other species of sub-genus Corticata. This fertile hybrid has pink flowers from Novembre till March.

External links

• Cyclamen Society
• Pacific Bulb Society
• photos — Mark Griffiths