Begonia
aka.: Tiger Kitten, Begonias, etc.
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Cucurbitales
Family: Begoniaceae
Genus species: Begonia sp.
Regions: South America, Central America, Africa, Southern Asia.
The “Tiger Kitten” folk name is in the family of Begoniaceae, and beautiful plants known as “Begonias”. The only other member of the family Begoniaceae is Hillebrandia, a genus with a single species in the Hawaiian Islands. The Genus was coined by Charles Plumier French to honor the Haitian former governor Michel Bégon. Begonia has over 1500 species and is one of the ten largest angiosperm genera. Found mostly in tropical or subtropical climates, Begonias are a terrestrial, sometimes epiphytic herb or undershrub. Commonly upright-stemmed, rhizomatous, or tuberous. Plants are monoecious, with unisexual white, pink, scarlet, or yellow male and female flowers occuring separately on the same plant. Most species has a fruit with winged capsules containing numerous minute seeds. Unusually attractively marked leaves often large and variously marked or variegated, usually asymmetric. Plant is often cultivated as bedding plants outside.
classifications: cane-like, shrub-like, tuberous, rhizomatous, semperflorens, rex, trailing-scandent, or thick-stemmed.
Cultivation: Requires warm temperatures, bright shade, few will tolerate full sun, especially in warmer climates; well-drained growing medium not constantly wet or dried out. Grows and flowers year-round. Propagated by division or from stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, or sections of leaves.
Plant at the National Arboretum, Washington, D.C.
Cultural: cultivar Kimjongilia is a floral emblem of North Korea.
Bibliography / More information:
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain; as well as Wikipedia.
- American Begonia Society
- Phylogenetic Relationships of the Afro-Malagasy Members of the Large Genus Begonia Inferred from trnL Intron Sequences
- A Phylogeny of Begonia Using Nuclear Ribosomal Sequence Data and Morphological Characters
- A recircumscription of Begonia based on nuclear ribosomal sequences
- Wikipedia: Begonia
