Monthly Tips

February- Plant of the Month

Cyclamen coum

I was out inspecting the mayhem created by the snow and cold - one ceanothus broken under the wet load, a young hemlock with a new and disturbing lean, hebes defoliated, etc. - when there, shining through the mulch, totally unbattered and blooming like mad was Cyclamen coum.

Cyclamen coum is one of the tribe of hardy cyclamens. These aren't the cyclamen you see for sale at the grocery store. Those are fine house plant but would shrivel to nothingness outside at this time of year. Hardy cyclamen are small, they're sweet, they're dainty, and they are tough as nails.

[Cyclamen coum]

Cyclamen coum

Cyclamen coum has roundish leaves, maybe an inch across. Mine are marbled with silver although some have plain green leaves. Rising above the foliage to the great height of an inch or so are pink flowers with wing-like petals which sweep back as though in a high wind. Interestingly, the seeds have a sticky outer layer which ants like to eat. After consuming the tasty coating the ants depart, leaving the seed to start a new cyclamen.

Cyclamen do not make a heavy, weed-excluding ground-cover but they are charming and tough. These plants like shade to part shade and can even live and flower under water-sucking western red cedars - with no supplemental water. They manage this by going dormant in the summer. The leaves of Cyclamen coum come up in the fall, followed by the flowers which bloom into early spring and then the plant shrivels and disappears for the summer.

When I see that pool of pink in the distance, I always stop whatever I'm about and go over to admire the small windswept flowers and dainty marbled foliage. When you add drought and shade tolerance to this tiny charmer's package - you realize that Cyclamen coum is not a plant to be missed.

February - Tip of the Month

Pruning - beware the dreaded non-selective heading cut

For most people if a plant is sticking out into the sidewalk, obscuring the window or trying to get in through the front door, you whack it back and forget about it until another whacking is necessary. By whacking I mean you grab the offending stem and cut it back to someplace where it is not getting in the way anymore. This is almost certainly a non-selective heading cut. You didn't cut the branch to a node (where a leaf or other branch are or might be - see photo) you just chopped it off somewhere random. For most plants, whacking (=non-selective heading cut) leads to more trouble than you had before.

[Branch nodes]

Branch nodes

You may get what Cass Turnbull of Plant Amnesty refers to as the "hydra effect". You've cut off one problem branch and 2, 3 or more come back in its place. Often the branches that grow as the result of thoughtless whacking are ungainly and don't "fit" with how the rest of the plant looks. The branch may just die back making pest and disease problems more likely.

So what do you do about that plant impinging on the sidewalk? If the plant as a whole is too big for the spot, you should just move or remove it rather than set yourself up for an endless battle. If you can just prune back the occasional problem branch, cut back to a side branch that's 1/2 the size or more of the branch you're removing or cut the stem off where it meets a larger stem or the trunk.

If you want to know more about pruning - consider taking my class that starts 2/28 and runs for 2 Saturdays. I'll explain how to prune properly and then we'll go out and do it.