In addition to the various activities in the UK, the Society also carries out expeditions to study the plants in their native habitats, mapping distribution and gathering statistical data about leaf shapes, sizes and patterns, and flower colours and petal shapes and sizes. The results are reported in the Journal. Some plants are collected for scientific study and to introduce new genetic material into cultivation. Seed harvested from them is available to members through the annual distribution. These introductions are carried out strictly within the C.I.T.E.S. licensing controls, and the expeditions are backed by botanical institutions and the relevant government departments within the countries concerned.
The Society initially investigated Cyclamen coum in northern and southern Turkey and Israel. The object was to find out more about the divisions within the species, including where the division vetween ssp. coum and ssp. caucasicum lies. Completion of this project requires further visits to the eastern Black Sea coast, the Caucasus, abd the Elburz Mountains in northern Iran. This will be completed as the political situation in those areas allows. Some good horticultural forms have been introduced including C. coum f. albissimum, which was collected on the Golan Heights. A form of this has been selected, propagated, and distributed under the variatel name 'Golan Heights'.
Subsequently, the Society has studied the sub-divisions within the 'repandum group' of species (C. repandum in its sub-species rhodense and peloponnesiacum, and C. creticum) on the Greek islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Karpathos, the Peloponnese, and Crete. A 1997 survey of the Greek island of Kithira failed to find either Cyclamen creticum or Cyclamen repandum ssp peloponnesiacum. However, a 1998 field study in the Greek Dodecanese Islands found Cyclamen repandum ssp. rhodense and C. hederifolium var. confusum on Kos, and extensive populations of Cyclamen persicum on Symi.
In 1997, 1998 and 1999 the Society sent expeditions to south-east Turkey to study Cyclamen trochopteranthum, and investigate the possibility that there are two distinct forms at low and high altitudes.
In autumn 2001 the Society sent an expedition to western Turkey to study Cyclamen intaminatum.
Please click on the following links for reports of the findings of the Society's expeditions.
Please click on the following links for abridged field data and notes for those sites where Cyclamen Society collections were made. Due to space limitations, much of the data about companion plants has been omitted. In the interests of conservation, only general locational details have been provided unless a site is generally well documented elsewhere. Photographs of some sites are available.
Please click on the following links for listings of Cyclamen Society
collections. All numbers given should be prefixed with 'CSE'. So for example
91218 is CSE 91218. For each year from 1990, the first two characters of the
number denote the year of collection - e.g. 91218 was collected in 1991.
Numbers in the format S10/N102 refer to 1987 & 1988 collections. Portraits
of some collected plants are available.
For field data on these plants,
refer to the Field Data and Site Notes page for the site specified.