BEGONIA CONFERENCE 



157 



all, and in a third form called " Adonis " the male flowers 

 immensely preponderate. 



Li so large a genus as Begonia, it is not surprising that a 

 ■considerable diversity of habit should be found among the species. 

 By far the greater number are dwarf succulent herbs of perennial 

 duration, those with fleshy rhizomes and tubers losing their 

 foliage annually, whilst those that are suffruticose or scandent, as 

 B. fuchsioides, retain their foliage for a longer period, a circum- 

 stance that greatly enhances the value of these kinds for 

 decorative purposes in winter. 



The number of species now known to science is probably not 

 far short of 350, and of these it has been estimated that upwards 

 of 150 have at one time or another been in cultivation, the 

 majority of them in botanic gardens only, being apparently of 

 little horticultural interest, and of the not yet introduced species, 

 probably still fewer will be found of any use for gardens. But 

 notwithstanding that so many of the species are never likely to 

 be of horticultural value, at least in our time, there can be no 

 doubt that they afford a wide field for experiment and trial. Of 

 course, so large an assemblage of species under one genus, and 

 dispersed over well-nigh one-third of the land surface of the 

 globe, presents no small difficulty to the botanist who has to deal 

 w T ith them systematically, and hence it is that the sixty or more 

 sectional divisions proposed by the eminent systematist De 

 •Candolle (most of which are evidently founded on very artificial 

 characters), and the series in which the species have been 

 arranged (founded chiefly on the characters of the androecium) 

 by our own distinguished countryman, the late Mr. Bentham, 

 although highly conducive to a more exact comprehension of the 

 great family of Begonias, have little or no practical bearing from 

 a horticultural standpoint ; and remembering the vague sense 

 in which the term " section " is often used in horticulture, its 

 application to any particular group of Begonias is liable to be 

 misleading, especially as any such artificial division may be 

 broken through at any time by the hybridiser. 



The Begonias are tropical plants, for although a few in South 

 Africa occur beyond the southern tropic, and a much larger 

 number are found in Northern India beyond the northern tropic, 

 they all live under essentially tropical conditions. With respect 

 to the geographical dispersion of the species, generally speaking 



