Species
B. umbraculifera
Photos
5 photos
Identity
- Genus
- Begonia
- Name
- B. umbraculifera
- Author
- J. D. Hooker, Bot. Mag.
- Publication Date
- 1896
- Country
- Brazil
- Region
- America
- Section
- Tetrachia
- Plant Type
- Thick Stem
- Reference
- Bot. Mag. 22:pl. 7457. 1896.; JGSL9/08
- Article References
- Curtis's botanical magazine, v. 122 = ser. 3, v. 52, (1896)
Plant
- Description
- Curtis's botanical magazine, v. 122 = ser. 3, v. 52, (1896) B. umbraculifera: A very remarkable plant in habit, and the second only (in so far as is known to me) of the vast genus to which it belongs, in which hermaphrodite flowers have been observed. The other is B. frigida, A.DC.* (Tab. 5760), also a native of Brazil, in which the ovary of the female flower is inferior, and 3-4 quetrous, but that of the hermaphrodite flower consists of 3- 4 free superior carpels, surrounded by a few hypogynous stamens. I have sought in vain amongst the sections of the genus established by A. De Candolle in the Prodromus, for one under which this singular plant should be placed; and I have compared it, also in vain, with all the drawings and descriptions to which I have access, in search of any species of similar habit, namely, as having a perfectly simple, stout, erect stem, with few distant distichous reniform orbicular peltate fleshy leaves, and very long peduncled supra-axillary cymes, the peduncle of which is confluent at the base with the internode above it. Referring to the key to De Candolle's sections of the genus which I have given in "The Genera Plantarum," it falls into the last group of American ones, those with entire placentas and style-arms papillose all over, and amongst these Wageneria is that into which may for the present be placed, though differing from that section in habit and foliage, and in having four male perianth-segments. In habit it approaches nearest to B. dichotoma, Jacq. le. t. 619. Mr. Watson informs me that B. umbraculifera was imported amongst some orchids from Brazil by Messrs. F. Sander & Co., from whom a plant was obtained in 1893, and that by far the greater majority of the flowers throughout the plant are male. It flowered in the Begonia House of the Royal Gardens in March 1895. Description: Stems six from the root, four feet high, quite simple, erect, half an inch in diameter, terete, smooth, pale brown, leafing towards the tip only, marked with the narrow annular scars of fallen stipules. Leaves alternate, fleshy, four to six inches in diameter, lower reniform, upper peltate, obliquely orbicular, obtuse, one side more or less produced into a broad, low auricle, bright pale green and glossy above, pale beneath, with eight to ten radiating nerves; margins obscurely denticulate. Stipules an inch long, green, caducous. Cymes large, supra axillary, dichotomously branched, peduncle many times longer than the petiole, confluent at the base with the internode above it, rose colored; branches and short slender pedicels rose-red. Flowers crowded in small corymbs, chiefly male, with a few female and bisexual flowers. Male flowers: one inch in diameter, bracteate; sepals 2, orbicular, white; stamens about twenty, in a compressed bundle; anthers oblong, obtuse, longer than the quite free filaments; (very rarely an imperfect subglobose 2-celled inferior ovary is formed in the male flower. Female flower: half an inch in diameter, bracteate; bracts subulate; sepals 5, ovate, two outer rather the largest, styles 3, very short, stigmas hippocrepiform; ovary orbicular in outline, broadly equally 3-winged, wings rounded, 3-celled, placentas undivided. Hermaphroditic flowers: sepals and stamens of the male, the latter surrounding and attached to the sides of a free two to five lobed ovary, with as many short, stout styles and 2-3 lobed stigmas. – J. D. H.
Lineage
Parents
No parentage recorded.
Descendants
No recorded descendants.
Culture
No populated fields in this section.