B."Fragrant Queen"
Based on its previous work on 13 Begonia cultivars, a research team headed by Prof. Guan Kaiyun from the CAS Kunming Institute of Botany has been successful in cultivating seven new Begonia strains, namely, Begonia "Luxuriant", B. "Sillegona", B. "Purple Leaf", B. "Purple Stem", B. "Fragrant Queen", B. "Bushy" and B. "Dalie."
Begonia is a group of tropical herbs and shrubs noted for its beautiful flowers and widely bred as ornamental plants. According to statistics, there are about 2,000 undomesticated species (or their variants) in the world and more are cultivated by flower breeders. China is a country noted for her fecund trove of Begonia varieties, including 139 scrutinized or registered by plant taxonomists. They are mainly distributed in southwest China, and Yunnan is a rich gene pool for developing the floral resources.