132 PACIFIC STATES FLORAL CONGRESS. 



THE BEGONIA. 

 f 



BY P. BEVERIDGE KENNEDY. 

 HISTORY. 



The genus Begonia was named by Plumier, in honor of Michael 

 Begon, a French governor of San Domingo, about 250 years ago. 

 Linnajus introduced it into the first edition of his "Genera Plantarum," 

 about 1752, among Fragmenta, and it was not until the thirteenth edi- 

 tion of his "Systema Vegetabilum" that it was given a place in his sys- 

 tem. Plumier, in his work, "Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera" 

 described six species of begonia, but the descriptions were so imperfect 

 that they were of no use for identification. 



Linnaeus, never having seen a begonia but only these descriptions 

 of Plumier, placed all the six species of Plunder's under one species, 

 Begonia obliqua, in his Species Plantarum. These included all the 

 begonias known at that time. 



Although Sloane, Eumph, Lamarck, and Jacquin all mentioned the 

 begonia in their works, it was left to Dryander to show, for the first 

 time, any true light on the different species. In the first volume of 

 the "Transactions of the Linnsean Society," in 1879, he describes 

 twenty-one species, eleven from South America, seven from India, and 

 three from Africa. Nothing of importance was accomplished in the 

 further classifying of begonias until Klotzsch, in 1855, in an admir- 

 able work entitled "Begoniaceen Gattungen und Arten," monographed 

 all the dried and living begonias in the Berlin botanical gardens. 

 He was confronted by two difficulties: First, the flower parts of 

 begonias are so very delicate that boiling dried specimens ruins them. 

 Second, the identification of horticultural hybrids. The following 

 appeared to him to be true of hybrid begonias: Hybrids are stronger 

 growers ; they blossom more freely ; the male blossoms fall sooner, even 

 before being opened; the number of petals varies; the stamens are fre- 

 quently imperfect, and tend to develop into petals; the pollen grains 

 vary from that of pure species in being thinner, longer, and weaker, 

 or entirely impotent. Klotzsch described 194 different species and 

 hybrids, which included all the dried and living material known at 

 that time. He entirely revised the whole classification, dividing the 

 one genus Begonia into forty-one genera, but retaining the specific 

 names. 



The last great important work from a systematic standpoint is that 



De Candolle in his Prodromus, published in 1864. Here we find 



374 species and hybrids described, while Klotzsch had only 195. 



