An entertaining show that began as a regular segment of Art Linklater's House Party and later revived for a couple of seasons by Bill Cosby was premised on the hilarious utterances of innocent children saying the darndest things. It is now not the children but the adults at Toronto's Sick Kids' Hospital that are saying the darndest things and we are not amused.
In this blog that I call Iconoclastic Tom, the icons that I am attacking all enjoy high public esteem: World Famous Hospitals, the Medical Establishment and a battery of authors and scientists all with impressive credentials; while I am just a guy that works at a garden centre and a lonely voice.
I am working my way through a list of plants that are said to be 'known to be poisonous to humans'. I have now reached Cyclamen and I'm sputtering.
In the last few years I have accumulated a considerable library on the subject but could not find any accusations of toxicity being levelled at Cyclamen. Until: Mind-Altering and Poisonous Plants of the World. (Timber Press 2008) The authors classify its ' toxicity as mildly hazardous. "However, the rhizomes are bitter and hidden below the ground. Despite the fact that the plant is quite toxic, very few actual cases of poisoning have been recorded in recent years." Yes. Very few to none.
In 1980 on a visit to the Golden Gate park in San Francisco I was awestruck by a most spectacular display of Cyclamen; more varieties than I ever dreamed existed. The park covers more than 1000 acres and includes a golf course, a Japanese Tea Garden, museums and one of the largest conservatories in the world.
The Cyclamen were displayed in perfectly clean 10 inch clay pots. in military order on tiered redwood shelving. Every one of their fleshy silvery- splotched and veined leaves was pristine. They were all in full flower. If their was one their was five hundred with each variety different from its neighbour. Whites and every possible shade of coral, fuchsia, aubergine and purple. Cut and serrated petals, colour-streaked petals (think parrot tulips) ; a kaliadoscope.
I left my heart in San Francisco.
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