B. quadrialata ssp. quadrialata var. quadrialata

Curtis's botanical magazine, v. 135 = ser. 4, v. 5, 1909 B. quadrialata as SYN. B. modica: Begonia modica is a member of the section Scutobegonia, which includes a small group of species all of them confined to West Africa from Liberia to the Congo. The species of this section are small herbs mostly with peltate leaves and yellow flowers. The plant from which the figure here given has been prepared was raised from one of a number of tubers of the species received at Kew in 1907 from Mr. J. Anderson, Curator of the Botanic Station, Kumasi, who had found them growing in the Gold Coast Colony on rocky ground at an altitude of 600 ft. above sea level. Under the treatment ordinarily accorded to Begonias these tubers developed their leaves and flowered for the first time in September 1908. Description: Herb, almost stemless. Leaves petioled; petioles 1 ¼ - 1½ in. long, reddish, hirsute; blades obliquely widely peltate-ovate, 2- 3½ in. long, 1½- 2½ in. wide, slightly crenate and undulate, somewhat fleshy, bright green, except for the faintly reddish margins, quite glabrous above, softly hirsute beneath, nerves 6-8 radiating from the petiole which joins the lamina about ½-3/4 in. from the base. Peduncles few-flowered, ¾-1 ¼ in. long, sparingly hairy. Flowers in umbel, yellow; each umbel of 2 stalked males and a single subsessile female; the males on glabrous pedicels 3/4 in. long, with 2 rounded-elliptic sepals; 2/5 in. long, the upper flushed outside with red and with a bright red blotch within, the lower yellow on both sides ; petals O ; stamens 12-13, their filaments connate below in a column, the female sepals like those of the male flowers, but almost orbicular; petals O ; styles 4, shortly connate below; stigmas reniform with an unbroken series of papillae, 3/4 lin. wide; ovary in flower reddish, 1/3 in. long, 1/6 – 1/5 in. wide including the wings, slightly narrowed towards the base.

• Classification: Species
• Plant Type: Rhizomatous
• Botanical Section: Loasibegonia
• Origin: Africa, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Zaire, Angola, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Dem. Rep. Congo.
• Originator: M. Sosef, Wageningen Agric. Univ. Papers
• Date of Origin: 1994