I think you had wind pollination. Begonia pollen is so light just movement near the plant can release it. Some seeds are mistakenly referred to as 'bee-pollinated' referring to the pollen, but it, the pollen from begonias, is not sticky enough to be carried by bees, however I think the movement of bees is strong enough to release pollen so perhaps it is not incorrect to refer to 'bee-pollinated' begonias.

My Begonia luxurians conntinues to form tons of seeds. I haven't gotten seedlings from the very first seeds, but those after that look good and germinate in 2 weeks. The fact that flowers have made seed over a period of months now, many inforescences, with no obvious pollen source nearby, makes me suspect that the flowers have self-pollinated. However, the seeds are "open pollinated", so until seedlings mature, the possibility exists that the seeds are of a hybrid.

Here are seedlings I repotted a couple days ago. These are sown a bit too heavily, in a 3 inch pot. I wrote down that it was 50+ seeds.

Here's what they look like repotted in 4 inch pots:

And here's a couple of the current inflorescences. The one on the left should have ripe seed soon (~100 pods!). The one on the right looks like it could be a repeat.

So it looks like I will have tons of seeds. Many or most will go to the American Begonia Society seed fund.

I bought some seeds from Australia a few years ago, I had good germination in five days.

woebegonia, at what temperature did you start the Australian seeds?

Did they turn out to be the species or a hybrid? In a different forum Ross Bolwell reported that all the open pollinated seeds that he was aware of in Australia turned out to be hybrids. Or were these known to be pollinated by hand? That's a lot of work for this species.

Do I remember correctly that your seedlings grew very slowly?

They germinated on July 9, 2011, which tells me they were at ordinary temperature below some plant lights, those are usually warm days in July and I don't often sow in summer. It hasn't been a fast grower, it's about 14 inches tall in a large glass bowl, on the floor of my plant room getting whatever light it can from nearby plant lights.I don't want it to grow much, mainly I wanted to observe it to see what happens with it. There is no way I can let it grow to full size in my house. But as it grow I may be able to tell if it is a species or a hybrid.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I followed up here. The two pots of little Begonias, shown above on August 16th, looked as shown below on September 9. I gave some 3 inch pots on Sept. 9th and several more on Sept. 18th.

Sept. 9th:

Here's what they look like only two weeks later. The characteristic "palm-like" leaves are not too obvious yet, unless one looks carefully. Divided leaves are just appearing among the newest leaves of the biggest plants. I think this will be very obvious in a couple weeks or so.

Right now I think I have 35 in individual 3 inch pots, and about 23 more in two other pots, for a total of about 58 plants. All of these are from seeds started in one 3 inch pot, just over 3 months ago.

I decided to give all the plants individual pots a couple days ago. Below are all the plants, 59 I believe. I included an inset in the upper left of all the plants in a round 3 inch pot. That was August 14, less than a month and a half ago.

This may look smaller than it actually is. The plants are in "3 inch" pots, almost all of which are 2 3/4 inches. The 10 x 6 array of plants is 27 inches wide.

They look great!

Mark---in your picture on August 16, what are the orange fruits in the background?

I just surface sowed seeds of B.luxurians yesterday on a pasteurized mix of extra fine vermiculite and a little fine seedling mix, with a tiny bit of fertilizer. I have pretty good exlerience growing, but never tried starting begonias from seed --hoping for some sign of life in a week or so!

Rick in CT

Hi Rick,

It's an Arbutus, A. unedo I assume. Right now it's dropping fruits everywhere--they end up stuck to feet/shoes and make a huge mess. It's a big tree that hangs over my yard and creates a lot of shade. The huge Begonia luxurians seeds is colliding with it. The Arbutus is blooming heavily, providing a feast for the hummingbirds. Here's what surprises me--I finally tasted a fruit a few weeks ago. It was s fantastic. This really surprised me. I've always heard they are pretty bad.

I've only sown the seeds on peat:perlite. However, I would assume that a medium that works for other tiny surface sown seeds should work fine.

Hi Janine, thanks for the encouragement. I need to get back to you soon. My computer just died completely, which doesn't help when it comes to catching up. Are you interested in some of these seeds? I'm sending the seeds from the three most productive unrepresented to the ABS seedbank. I compared those seeds to known quntities of cinnamon to get an idea of how much. It should be well over half a teaspoon of seeds. That's a lot of Begonia seeds. I think these are strangely smaller than most Begonia seeds. Maybe not so strange since the flowers and seedpods are so small.

The seedlings continue to grow very quickly. What I think is the fluorescence with the most pods (and seeds)--well over a hundred--is about to mature.

Here's an update, so you can see how much they grew over the last couple weeks:

And here's a closeup of a few:

And an individual seedling, in a 2 3/4 inch pot.

This post was edited by mark4321 on Fri, Oct 10, 14 at 1:57

Hi Mark, could you please tell me where you bought your Luxurians seeds from in Australia - would love to buy some too. Many thanks, Evelyne

I think you want to speak to woebegonia. My seeds are from my plant, which I purchased at a local nursery. My plant had reached 13 feet and was not making seed this year, so I cut it way back.