Species
B. beddomei
Photos
3 photos
Identity
- Genus
- Begonia
- Name
- B. beddomei
- Author
- J. D. Hooker, Bot. Mag.
- Publication Date
- 1884
- Place
- Assam
- Country
- India
- Region
- Asia
- Section
- Platycentrum
- Chr 2n
- 26
- Plant Type
- Thick Stem
- Synonyms and Comments
- assamica Lynden ex Pynaert, Rev. Hort. Suisse Romande, :255. 1886.—C. Chevalier, Les Begonias, :242. 1938.
- Reference
- Bot. Mag. 110:pl. 6767. 1884.; JGSL9/08
Plant
- Description
- Curtis’s Botanical Magazine v. 110 = ser. 3, v. 40, 1884 B beddomei - This is another addition to the already large group of Asiatic Begonias marshalled under the section Platycentrum of Alphonse de Candolle, which includes yellow, pink, and white-flowered species (see B. xanthina, t. 4683, 5202, 5207; B. rubro-venia, t. 4689; B. grfffithii, t. 4984; B. Rubro-venia, t. 5201, and others), but differs from the sectional character in having three styles instead of two, as indeed do other species (as B. Cathcartii). Most of these species have acuminate connectives to the anther, an organ which in our plant is very broad and hardly even acute. The pellucid character of the leaf is a very striking one, the red of the under surface being in certain lights visible through the tissue, and the white spots have a beautiful silvery luster. B. beddomei is a native of the Assam hills, whence tubers were sent by Gustav Mann, Superintendent of Forests, to Col. Beddome, F.L.S. after whom I have the satisfaction of naming it, and to whom the Royal Gardens are indebted for the plant which is here figured, and which flowered in December last. Description: Rootstock the size of a walnut, tuberous, lobed, dark brown. Leaves all radical, erect; blade horizontal, four to six inches in diameter membranous and quite pellucid, broadly and very obliquely ovate-cordate or orbicular- cordate, obscurely angularly lobed and denticulate, ciliolate, above very pale green with white spots, glabrous or obscurely hairy, beneath pale dull red-purple, slightly hairy between the very hairy strong nerve; petiole four to six inches long, pale green, laxly clothed with soft spreading hair. Scape shorter than the petiole, clothed at the very base with ovate acuminate erect dark brown sheathing scales, pale green, nearly glabrous. Cyme of two short spreading branches, bearing each a very few pale rose-colored flowers, of which one or more is a female; bracts small, lanceolate; pedicel half an inch long or more. Male flower one inch and a half in diameter. Perianth-segments four, spreading, anterior and posterior broadly ovate, obtuse; two lateral narrower, oblong. Stamens in a dense globose head, filament short free; anthers small broad, with a tumid subacute connective and short lateral cells. Female flowers smaller and darker colored. Perianth segments eight, broadly oblong. Ovary three angled, two celled, one angle shortly produced into an obtuse wing. Styles three, short, dilating into a truncate twisted lobed stigma; ovules on all sides of the projecting placentas in each cell. - J. D. H.
Lineage
1 descendants
Parents
No parentage recorded.
assamica Lynden ex Pynaert, Rev. Hort. Suisse Romande, :255. 1886.—C. Chevalier, Les Begonias, :242. 1938.
Descendants
1 recorded children
As female parent
1
Male parent: B. diadema
As male parent
0
No children recorded with this plant as the male parent.
Culture
No populated fields in this section.