I’ve moved…

Please visit me at my new business and site: Clement Horticulture

Hooray For Spring And My New Camera

Due to a broken camera shutter, my posts came to a screeching halt in winter.  In late winter, Baltimore was buried under a fantastic record breaking snowfall.  For some images from a follow blogger, CLICK HERE.

As I learn to use my new Panasonic camera, I hope to bring more updates from my garden soon.  Below are my first Spring pics.

Seasons Greetings From Baltimore City

The lighting of 34th Street in Hampden

The Miracle on 34th Street

Me, this past Saturday.

Happy Holidays Everybody!

Cyclamen, Cyclamen Everywhere

My garden has been neglected this month, to say the least.  Whether distracted by business or the holidays, my free time has been absorbed by many things other than garden care.  However, my garden has clever ways of reminding me it is still there and lately it is Cyclamen who have garnered my attention.  Their leaves and flower buds are popping up everywhere.

I first encountered hardy Cyclamen in Bavaria.  My girlfriend and I were driving to Bad Reichenhall in Germany when we came across Thumsee, a beautiful lake and popular swimming hole, just west of the city.  We parked the car and decided to take a hike on a path around the lake.  While dodging a group of nude seniors who were trying to coax us into the water, we stumbled upon, quite literally, a patch of blooming cyclamen.  The flowers were tiny, but the tubers can grow to be quite large and here they emerged from the soil like bulbous rocks.  The flowers had delicate wing-like petals, but what struck me most, was that among the cyclamen patch where distinct groups whose leaves had different markings from the next.  I was hooked.

Various Cyclamen Leaf Markings From My Urban Garden

According to The Cyclamen Society, “The genus is notable for the fact that although it is small, there are species which flower in every month of the year”.  The thing I find most interesting is the important role of ants in the germination process of many Cyclamen seeds.  Ants are attracted to a sticky coating on the seeds, so they collect seeds from the plant and carry them away, often to their home.  There they eat the sticky coating and then discard the seed.  Oddly, it is the removal of this coating that makes the seeds particularly viable for germination.

Here's a trivia question to you all - Which species of hardy Cyclamen shoots up flowers before its leaves and is blooming now? I don't know and this one is my garden.

Below is a time lapse video I found on YouTube of a Cyclamen blooming. Enjoy!