Sows' bread or hares' ears

 Over 20 years ago I planted a few cyclamen corms under a fuchsia bush and the delicate pale pink flowers lift their heads each autumn as a little secret reassurance as the evenings turn dark.

I imagine that many people know cyclamen only as a showy, collapse-prone pot plant that makes a  colourful emergency gift. They may never had had the opportunity to see them growing wild in Mediterranean woods where they bloom in huge rosy drifts, their tiny streamlined petals folded back like hares' ears or greyhounds' muzzles - images employed by DH Lawrence in his extraordinary, fervid poem Sicilian Cyclamens which I strongly recommend be read.

Cyclamen's more mundane name Sowbread comes from the mediaeval Latin Panis porcinus. The plant's round corms were feasted upon by domestic pigs let loose into the woods to fatten up before winter set in.