Garden Plants - Begonia

Poor old Michel Begon, for whom the begonia is named, is most unlikely ever to have seen the popular garden plant that ended up bearing his name. He was part of the governmental machine of Louise XIV, but not in France. Begon was first sent to Santo Domingo, a French possession and later rose to become Governor of Canada. It was all a bit of subtle flattery, of the kind so common in royal courts at that time - Begon had recommended that the king employ the services of a monk, Charles Plumier, as a plant hunter. Plumier repaid the compliment by naming one of the South American flowers he found after his first patron.

The begonia pearcei is named for the plant hunter Richard Pearce - who spent years in South America in the 1860s, finding and importing new plants. It was said that he would climb over 12,000 feet (that's the height of Africa's second highest snow-capped mountain!) with no equipment, to find plants. Pearce worked for Veitch and Sons, Nursery. Between 1840 and 1912, this firm hired twenty-three plant collectors to undertake many expeditions in search of new plants. These trips were dangerous, not to say expensive, some were a spectacular success others a terrible failure. Some Veitch collectors lost their lives, others became household names in their time and are still famous amongst gardeners today. Perhaps poor old Pearce's worst problem was protecting his blotting paper! Victorian expeditions carried huge amounts of blotting paper which was held in large presses with screws that tightened the pressure on the paper. These, of course, were used to press botanical samples, so they could be preserved and transported. The problem in South America was two-fold - the relative humidity made the paper damp and inclined to fall apart, and a thousand species of bug, fly and termite seemed to decide that blotting paper was manna from heaven. In the end it had to be stored in tin trunks which were painted on the outside with a mixture of tar paint (to trap insects) and aloes (to taste nasty and scare them off).

Garden Begonia photograph by gailf548, used under a creative commons attribution licence