B. ‘Sedenii’

Culture

Original Botanical Description or Link to

The florist and pomologist. London:"Journal of Horticulture" Office,1863-1879. 1869: Pl. [8], Page 169 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/29449 BEGONIA SEDENI. With an illustration. We learn from the Messrs. Veitch and Sons, of Chelsea, who are the fortunate raisers of the subject of our plate, and to whom we are indebted for the opportunity of figuring it, that it was obtained by crossing B. boliviensis with an unnamed species, not yet offered for sale. It was raised in 1868, and was exhibited on June 2 of the present year, at South Kensington, where it obtained a First-Class Medal and Certificate; and on June 30, at the Regent 's Park, where the highest honours were also awarded to it. We believe that this new Begonia will prove one of the most ornamental and valuable of our decorative plants, for not only are its blossoms large, abundant, and highly coloured, but its habit is in every way irreproachable; and as it t hrives well- so we are informed on the best authority- in a temperature of 55° to 60°, which suits B. boliviensis, there can be no difficulty on the score of cultivation. Our figure will show that we do not exaggerate its beauty. Begonia Sedeni is a soft-wooded plant, with erect hairy purplish-red stems. The leaves are obliquely ovate-lanceolate, tapered to a long point, duplicately serrate, of a dull green, with pale-coloured veins, and red hairs which show as a reddish fringe at the edge. The cymes are three-flowered, axillary, on reddish peduncles four inches long, bearing a pair of bluntly-ovate bracts subtending the three pedicels, which are about an inch and a half long. The central or larger flower is male, and has two ovate sepaline divisions an inch long, and two oblong ovate petaline ones an inch and a half long, while in the centre is a tuft of yellow stamens. The two lateral flowers are female, somewhat smaller, with five oblong segments, and three contorted yellow stigmas, surmounting a three-winged ovary, which has one of the wings prolonged. It is most floriferous, the young plants, when only six inches high, developing blossoms freely. M.