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BEGONIA CONFERENCE. 



Held in the Society's Gardens, at Chiswick, 

 August 23, 1892. 



OPENING ADDRESS 

 By the Chairman, Mr. Harry J. Veitch, F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 



In the whole range of subjects which horticulturists have taken 

 in hand with a view of effecting their improvement and their 

 better adaptation for decorative purposes, there is not one, 

 I think, which stands forth more prominently at the present 

 time than the Begonia in its collective sense. To whatever 

 department of decorative gardening we turn, we find Begonias 

 represented in great force. For the hall and drawing-room 

 the group of species distinguished by their handsome foliage, 

 and the numerous mules and hybrids that have been raised 

 from them, supply some of the most conspicuous ornaments. 

 For the conservatory and greenhouse during the dull months 

 of late autumn and winter, the free-flowering shrubby or suffru- 

 ticose kinds afford a long succession of flowers of delicate and 

 pleasing colours ; and, more important than all these, we now 

 possess a race of Begonias, derived from a group of Andean 

 species, which rivals, if it does not surpass, in the gorgeous and 

 varied colour of its flowers, the brilliant strains of zonal and 

 other Pelargoniums which have so long held sway among 

 summer bedding plants. 



Let us glance backward over a period of about a quarter of a 

 century, and call to mind what position the Begonia then held 

 in gardens. The varieties with grey and bronze foliage of the 

 Eex group were just then becoming popular, for their progenitors 

 had been in Europe some years, and horticulturists, chiefly 

 French and Belgian, had succeeded in obtaining, either by selec- 

 tion from seedlings of the same species, or by crossing B. Bex 

 with allied species from the same habitat, several forms with 



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