This Begonia is from Cameroon and is a very robust and beautiful plant when mature. The stock for the plant pictured below comes from Andys Orchids. In my experience it is generally very slow to acclimate but once it gets going produces new leaves fairly consistently, all coming out of the main mother plant. To grow a plant from a single leaf takes around 8 months in my experience. The leaves grow to about 4-5″ long, and have an interesting bullate structure. If the leaf tears, it does so along these small geometric divisions. Each ‘compartment’ has a bump with a small opaque hair growing in the middle.
This plant surprised me as when I flooded my terrarium, it seemed to do tremendously well. Here is some growing information from IUCN Red List,
“Begonia microsperma is a lowland forest herb apparently restricted to sheer spray-soaked rock faces or on trees near waterfalls. It has greenish yellow flowers and leaves which are peltate, elliptic-ovate and 6-18 x 3.3-12 cm, the upper surfaces with numerous conical bullae, each tipped with a bristle hair (Sosef 1994).”
And the almost opened and newly opened flowers,
In full bloom,
A female flower,
