Cultivar
B. ‘Fireflush’
Photos
5 photos
Identity
- Genus
- Begonia
- Name
- B. ‘Fireflush’
- Originator
- Rougler
- Date of Origin
- 1866
- Publication Date
- 1949
- Place
- France
- Country
- France
- Region
- Europe
- Plant Type
- Rex Cultorum
- Female Parent
- B. muricata
- Male Parent
- B. annulata
- Synonyms and Comments
- B. ‘Bettina Rothschild’; B. ‘Bethiana Rothschild’; B. ‘Fire Flush’;
- Publication Reference
- DV; WBHC-WW;
- Article References
- American Horticultural Society, October 1952, pg. 237-259; Concerning Rex Begonia, by B. Y. Morrison; The Begonian (39) Oct 1972, p. 230;
- Photo References
- JBS, Begonias :78. 1980; Tebbitt, Begonias pl.164. 2005; The Begonian, Feb 1967; The Begonian, May 1947; Exotica - Pictorial Encyclopedia of Indoor plants; Begonias, Misono 1974: 116 (185);
Plant
- Description
- WHAT IS BEGONIA 'FIREFLUSH?' By J. Doorenbos Agricultural University Wageningen, Laboratory of Horticulture, The Netherlands There are plants which have never been a commercial success and are ignored by the horticultural literature, but yet are widely grown by amateur gardeners. Such an 'old faithful' is Begonia 'Fireflush'; one only needs to look through the indexes of The Begonian to see how popular it is. Nevertheless, it presents something of an enigma. It is usually classified as a rex begonia. This is obviously not true. But then, what is it? The Buxton Check List states that the true name of B. 'Fireflush' is 'Bettina Rothschild'. According to the same source, it was bred by Rougier in 1866. The reference given is RHS, which I assumed to mean Royal Horticultural Society. This body awarded B. 'Bettina Rothschild' a First-Class Certificate in 1884, but according to the accumulative index of 1935 there is no reference to the plant in its Journal. I picked up the scent again when looking through the 1859 issue of Neubert's Deutsches Garten Magazin. Here I found a colored picture of B. splendida Knerkii, which is very similar indeed to our plant. This Begonia was produced at Berlin by Passewaldt from the cross B. splendida x B. annulata. It is stated in the text that Verschaffelt at Ghent had already made the same cross and produced a very similar hybrid. This led to a search in the Belgian literature of the time, and here I found a beautiful colored picture of Verschaffelt' s plant in l’Illustration Horticole of 1859. It is called Begonia Leopoldi and the accompanying text states that it is a hybrid of B. griffithii and B. splendida. What are B. annulata, B. griffithii and B. splendida? The first is a species from India which was introduced into England in 1856. Karl Koch described it in the Berliner Allgemeine Gartenzeitung of March 1858. Two months later, Hooker described it in the Botanical Magazine as B. griffithii, and although this is the name by which it became generally known, the legitimate name is B. annulata because this has priority. B. splendida was introduced at about the same time, presumably from Java, and described by Koch in the same article. According to Alphonse de Candolle, B. splendida hort. Rollison (he does not cite Koch) is the same species as B. robusta Blume. Although no less an authority as Axel Lange was to doubt this later. I am inclined to agree with De Candolle, B. robusta has lobed leaves and a striking red tomentum on its stem and petioles; the latter characteristic (the 'fireflush ') was passed on to its hybrids. The entire leaf margin and the light concentric bands came from B. annulata. We now have the following picture: two Asiatic species, B. annulata and B. robusta, are introduced around 1856. When crossed they give a nice hybrid, called B. Leopoldi (modern spelling: B. x leopoldii) by Verschaffelt and B. splendida by Passewaldt. Do far so good, but how do we get from here to ‘Bettina Rothschild”? As long as no reference can be found to the origin of B. Bettina Rothschild' (l have looked through all issues of the Revue Horticole, but to no avail) this remains obscure. It could be that it is simply another name for Verschaffelt's plant, but the picture shows leaves that more distinctly lobed than those of 'Bettina Rothschild', In this connection, it may be of importance that I could establish with the help of Dr. R. A. H. Legro that 'Bettina Rothschild' has about 52 chromosomes, which means that it is almost certainly a tetraploid. It could be, that this variety arose as a tetraploid seedling or bud sport from B. x leopoldii, and surpassed its parent by a greater vigor, caused by the doubled number of chromosomes. This could be tested if we could get hold of the parent species and establish that B. annulata has 22 and B. robusta 30 (or perhaps 32) chromosomes, as our hypothesis would require. In conclusion: Begonia ‘Fireflush' is a (probably tetraploid) hybrid between B. annulata, C. Koch and B. robusta, Blume, and its true name is B. x leopoldii Verschaffelt cv. 'Bettina Rothschild'.
- Stem Type
- Upright
Lineage
6 descendants
Parents
B. ‘Bettina Rothschild’; B. ‘Bethiana Rothschild’; B. ‘Fire Flush’;
Ancestry tree
Descendants
6 recorded children
As female parent
3
Male parent: B. ‘Regal Minuet’
Male parent: B. subpeltata
As male parent
3
Culture
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