These lovely autumn cyclamens Planted so long ago now Make me love the passing seasons.
Apparently cyclamens were once called sow-breads, a translation from medieval Latin panis porcinus = bread of pigs (compare panis angelicus).There was a belief that pigs eat the tubers of these plants. The OED gives this quotation from Lindley, 1830:
"...this is the principal food of the wild boars of Sicily."
Hmm. Miller, 1731 is probably a little closer:
"The Root is round like a Loaf, and the Sows eat it."
I think you can tell these stories to the Mafia. There is no scientific evidence that pigs eat cyclamen tubers.
But nosing around and digging deeper, I did root out some solid evidence that
(a) Some pigs dig cylamen tubers up
(b) Said tubers look like small round breads.
This excellent blog post goes into more detail and has a lovely photo of a pig *not* eating a tuber, although it gave it a good digging-up.
Shaggy Pig Story
These lovely autumn cyclamens
Planted so long ago now
Make me love the passing seasons.
Apparently cyclamens were once called sow-breads, a translation from medieval Latin panis porcinus = bread of pigs (compare panis angelicus).There was a belief that pigs eat the tubers of these plants. The OED gives this quotation from Lindley, 1830:
"...this is the principal food of the wild boars of Sicily."
Hmm. Miller, 1731 is probably a little closer:
"The Root is round like a Loaf, and the Sows eat it."
I think you can tell these stories to the Mafia. There is no scientific evidence that pigs eat cyclamen tubers.
But nosing around and digging deeper, I did root out some solid evidence that
(a) Some pigs dig cylamen tubers up
(b) Said tubers look like small round breads.
This excellent blog post goes into more detail and has a lovely photo of a pig *not* eating a tuber, although it gave it a good digging-up.