BEGONIA CONFERENCE. 



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form and colour of the foliage of a plant are taken into account 

 from a decorative point of view, the genus Begonia affords some 

 very striking examples. Thus B. falcifolia, which we obtained 

 from Peru many years ago, has sickle -like leaves six to seven 

 inches long ; moreover, the leaves are dotted with silver above 

 and are reddish crimson beneath. It is somewhat curious that 

 these long and narrow leaved Begonias should be so constantly 

 spotted and coloured from whatever part of the world they may 

 come, for so we find them in the old B. argyrostigma, B. 

 Wightii, the recently introduced B. Lubbcrsi, and others. Very 

 different from these is the race of Begonias whose foliage has a 

 greyish tint with a rough surface. In others, again, the leaf is 

 cut up into palmate-like segments, and these too are coloured 

 and marked in various ways, as in B. rubella and others. Then 

 we have others — as B. Pearcei, with some of its descendants, 

 and B. metallica — with leaves having pale nerves and a glossy 

 metallic surface ; and others, on the contrary, with a rough sur- 

 face marked in various ways with crimson, green, and silver. All 

 these various forms and colours of the leaves (and many more 

 instances could be adduced) have contributed to render many of 

 the Begonias valuable as decorative plants for their foliage alone. 

 One circumstance in connection with the foliage may be men- 

 tioned : the obliquity of the leaf, combined with the dull greyish- 

 brown colour observable in some of the earliest introduced forms, 

 suggested the popular name of the " Elephant's Ear " for the 

 whole genus, a name which seems now to have dropped out of 

 use, but which was certainly common during the first half of the 

 century. 



But it is not the foliage alone that distinguishes the Begonia 

 from other plants ; the flowers have a structure peculiar to 

 themselves, so much so that with the exception of a solitary 

 waif and stray from the family that has been picked up on an 

 island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and to 

 which Professor Oliver has given separate generic rank under 

 the name of Hillebrandia, the Begonias constitute a Natural 

 Order by themselves, with no immediate relationship with any 

 other family whatever. For the sake of clearness, a few simple 

 facts easily observed in the structure of the flowers of the 

 Begonia may here be stated. The flowers are what is called 

 monoecious — that is to say, the staminate or male element 



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