Welcome to my zone 9 garden. My roots are deeply planted in the sandy soil of sub-tropical central Florida, where the summers are long and hot, but the rest of the year is paradise!

Friday, September 14, 2007

A Giant of a Begonia


This begonia is a real beauty. My neighbor, Nancy a/k/a "gardener extraordinaire" gave it to me when it was a wee little plant. Her plant was at least 5' tall and gorgeous. I stuck it in the ground and it is now about 3' tall. I knew it was a begonia but I didn't know its official name until I saw a picture of it in the Aug/Sept issue of Florida Gardening magazine in the article about Valkaria Tropical Gardens. It is called a lotus-leafed begonia (B. nelumbiifolia). It gets a tall spike of creamy white (small) flowers. The flowers pale in comparison to the leaf. As an old-timer greenhouse plantsman once told us, "If the leaf is beautiful then the flower is usually blah!"

4 comments:

Rosengeranium said...

Amazing! Looks pretty big on the picture - but I guess part of it is me being unacustomed to inches :-)

Susan said...

rosengeranium - I should have placed a dinner plate next to the leaf for comparison. You can see by the little impatien leaves in the background how big these begonia leaves really are.

Wicked Gardener said...

5 feet tall begonias? Mine rarely clear 6 inches. Miracle Grow must work after all! :) Seriously, I'll have to look for that variety. Have you ever seen it in the stores?

Susan said...

wicked gardener...sorry, but I haven't seen it anywhere. I was lucky to get a slip from my neighbor who shops far and wide for unique plants.

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