Begonia Registration Handbook - American Begonia Society

Typical Progression of a Begonia Inflorescence
Male flowers
Female flowers
forming
Male flower bud.
As first male flower opens
two side buds start to mature.
Male flowers
Male flowers
As each male flower opens
successively two side buds
mature until all male flowers have
matured.
Normally as the last males are matured, the
older male flowers have already fallen off. A
female flower then matures to each side of the last
male flowers to mature. Most begonias produce
two female flowers for each male flower in this
last stage of the flower cluster formation. Some
begonias do however put out additional female
flowers from the bases of the first female flowers
to mature. By observation you can determine
how the cluster matures so that you can count
backwards to figure out the number of males if
you weren’t able to count them earlier. In the
illustrated example you take the total number of
female flowers in the mature cluster and divide by
two since there are two female flowers for each
male flower. Then add one male flower for each
crotch between the branches on the peduncle
because there were males there earlier in its
progression that fell off as the cluster matured. By
watching the pattern that a cluster follows you can
easily count backwards to determine the number
of male flowers.
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