Oakland’s December decoration

On the morning of December 1, I had occasion to wander through Oakland’s City Centre plaza on my way to a meeting, and noticed that all the flowers in every planter had been replaced by bright white and maroony-pink cyclamen.

Cyclamen are a slightly strange-looking flower, sort of like a tulip that refused to get in line, and I happen to like them a lot. I do not, however, like their name, which reminds me more of an antibiotic than anything beautiful. But no one asked me when they named the flower.

After I noticed the flowers in City Centre, I noticed them in front of the Ask.com building, which is where my meeting was taking place (although not with Ask.com, which might have just negated this entire post, because I could have asked them about this flower business, and they could have answered, and that would have been the end of it…), and then I noticed them in front of a bank elsewhere in the downtown, and then I just kept noticing them.

It has occurred to me that there’s some sort of downtown merchant’s association that got together and got a deal on California’s largest collection of cyclamen. I mean, that is a reasonable explanation.

But because this is my first holiday season in Oakland and these appeared along with a giant decorated tree, I now will forever associate cyclamen with Christmas in the East Bay.