Ivy-leaved Cyclamen

Long before it found its way into shaded English gardens, ivy-leaved cyclamen carpeted the stony woodlands of the Mediterranean, its pink and white blooms appearing almost overnight in the tired light of early autumn. Country folk called it sowbread, a nod to old accounts of wild pigs rooting up and eating the tubers, and gardeners have prized it for centuries for doing what almost nothing else will: flowering cheerfully under trees just as everything else winds down for winter. Herbal writers of earlier eras did record folk uses for the tuber, but those preparations were harsh and unreliable, and this plant has always belonged more to the garden than to the medicine chest. Today it endures simply as one of the most beloved small bulbs for naturalizing in shade, its marbled ivy-shaped leaves often as prized as the flowers themselves.