What's is this cute wee rockery plant?

[shockedballoon]

Saw it today in a sort of gravelly area and would love it for my rockery that is currently pretty shit I am a total noob at gardening so any other suggestions as to what to put in a rockery would be cracking!

Picture helps!

That’s cyclamen - spreads well when it’s happy

Cyclamen

Very invasive - at least in our garden!

I thought it looked a little similar flower shape-wise, but I didn't realise it could be so small and dainty, nor that it would grow in a rockery! I've only ever really seen it in pots for sale in the supermarket and it generally had much bigger flowers and red.

The wild forms are much smaller than the ones you can buy to keep in pots. I have seen them in the wild, in the Alps (the German name is Alpenveilchen, alpine violets) but they aren't native in Britain sadly.

They can most certainly naturalized in the UK though.

Carpets of them at Wakehurst, under the trees on the way in. Gorgeous.

It's a cyclamen- they grow from corms and come up every year. They spread too and are lovely colour just as the earlier stuff fades.

At this time of the year it's probably Cyclamen hederifolium which flowers in autumn. I have quite a few in both purple and white.
There is a spring-flowering species which is Cyclamen coum which is just beginning to show leaves in my garden, they flower in February / March along with Snowdrops and winter aconites. They all seed quite freely, and slowly multiply.