B. prismatocarpa ssp. prismatocarpa

Curtis's botanical magazine, v. 88 = ser. 3, v. 18, 1862 B. prismatocarpa: If this is wanting in floral beauty, it is nevertheless a very interesting plant, a Begonia with an elongated, four-celled, four sided capsule, a quadripartite style, and capitate stigmas. It is discovered by Mr. Gustav Mann in Fernando Po. It will probably constitute a new genus among Begoniaceae with M. Alphonse de Candolle, who has already alluded to some imperfect specimens of the plant in his valuable ‘memoire sur la Famille des Begoniacees' in the eleventh volume of the 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles' (quatrieme serie, Botan.) It is one of the many interesting new plants we have lately received through our collector from the mountain regions of tropical Western Africa. It flowered in the stove at Kew in December 1861. Its locality was rocks and trees at an elevation of 3000 feet above the sea-level. Description: The plant is small and insignificant looking; it has creeping, herbaceous, rounded, hairy stems and ascending branches. Leaves on long petioles, also hairy, the largest of them scarcely two inches in length, obliquely cordato-ovate, subpalmately three to five lobed, but the lobes are much larger on one side than the other, acuminate, coarsely and unequally, but sharply and submucronately serrated. Stipules small, ovate, fimbriated. Peduncle axillary, solitary, longer than the petiole, bearing a small imperfect umbel of two to four dipetalous flowers. Petals ovate, yellow, with a tinge of orange towards the base. Male flower pedicellate, with a cluster of many stamens borne upon a short stalk (hence monadelphous), all inclined to one side. Filament very short. Anther linear-cuneate, most of it made up of the connectivum, yellow. Female flowers sessile, apparently one to each umbel. Ovary or immature fruit linear-oblong, tetragonal, a little attenuated upwards; the four angles are prominent, but scarcely form wings, and these angles are equal, four-celled, with numerous ovules attached to the four central receptacles. Style short, soon dividing into four erecto-patent branches, each crowned with a large capitate downy stigma.

• Classification: Species
• Plant Type: Rhizomatous
• Botanical Section: Loasibegonia
• Origin: Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon
• Originator: W. J. Hooker, Bot. Mag.
• Date of Origin: 1862