mini cyclamen - how long do they last?

[Alison]

I've just bought some reduced very-sub-standard mini cyclamen from B&Q and potted up the poor things (the sort you put in winter window-boxes). The label says: "For one season only" - does that mean they are annuals? Surely cyclamen form a corm, don't they, and should therefore last more than one year?
Has anyone tried keeping them on more than one year? I was wondering if I could plant them out in a border to come up every year.
Alison.

[Chantal]

If they're supposed to go outside I would think they are Cyclamen Hederifolium which will go on for years if they're planted out. The flower heads become seeds and the stems corkscrew down into the ground to plant the seeds.

[Beryl]

I think they are bred as annuals. I bought some last year they were lovely through the winter but that was all. They didn't come up again.

I think you must ask for perennials at the garden centres. They do stock them but cost a bit more.

Beryl.

[Primrose]

I often get given a few of these plants around Christmas and plant the corms out in sheltered places in the garden near shrubs when their flowering season is over. Some of them do flower again the following season but it's hit and miss and I don't think they're genuinely very hardly.

[Gilly C]

I have planted some out in my garden but they were single specimens in pots not the bedding ones mine have survivied and flowered but our soil is very well drained we live on a limestone pavement

[Alison]

Thanks for all the replies. I have now potted up twenty of them, and they are all looking nice and healthy, with most of them having flowers in all different shades, so that was quite good for an outlay of £2!

I am though still baffled as to why they are marked as only lasting one season. I would have thought that a cyclamen was a corm-living plant, in which case the corm should have as its function the holding of food for the following year, in which case why are they annuals? Have they managed to breed the corm out of the cyclamen? They are obviously reasonably hardy, as they are sold as window-box plants for the winter, and certainly mine have survived last week's hard frost, so it can't be their hardiness that is in doubt.
Perhaps I will de-pot one or two when they are over and see if there is a corm.
Alison

[Primrose]

Sounds like you got a good bargain! Whether they are marked "For one season only" because they are reared under special conditions and all their energy goes into producing flowers for one season and they're therefore too exhausted to flower again, I don't know. Maybe the garden centres are just protecting themselves against future complaints in case they don't survive our centrally heated houses for more than a couple of weeks, like the manufacturers of packeted peanuts put warnings on the packs saying "Contains nuts !" My guess is that if you look after them, give them a rest at the end of flowering and then plant them out, you may get a pleasant surprise with some of them.

[Myrkk]

The ones we've planted outside only gave one leaf last year but this year they're bursting with leaves...... no flowers yet though.

The one we kept indoors flowers every year. It loses all its leaves and we don't water it really all summer then Dec time we start watering it occasionally and it bursts into leave and then flower. We're waiting on the flowers at the mo... can see the tiny stems starting.