Cyclamen

Cyclamen is a genus of some twenty-five perennial species in the primrose family, growing wild from Europe and the Mediterranean east to the Caucasus and Iran, with a single outlier in Somalia. Each plant rises from a rounded tuber, which sends up every leaf and every flower on a stalk of its own. The leaves are often marbled in greens and silver, and the nodding flowers sweep their petals back and upward, in white, pink or purple. Several European languages call it by some form of sowbread, after the pigs said to feed on the tubers. Collecting from the wild for the garden trade has badly thinned it in parts of its native range. Greek and Roman physicians used it, midwives turned to it in childbirth, and in the sixteenth century women in early pregnancy kept away from it for fear of miscarriage. Pliny held that cyclamen grown in a garden kept harmful spells from the household, and it was carried as an amulet against poisoned drinks. It has long served as a love charm and aphrodisiac, a little of it slipped into cakes or wine, and medieval Europe linked it with lust and love divination. Cunningham grows it in the bedroom to guard the sleeper and to help conception.