Last year, I fell in love with Begonia luxurians, not least for its very elegant leaves, which grow up to 45cm across and have coppery undersides and bright red petioles. It doesn’t look like a begonia – it’s more like a luxurious hemp or delicate palm – and every time I see it, I fall head over heels again.
This is a cane-type begonia, with elongated, fleshy stems that look a bit like bamboo. It comes from the Brazilian rainforests and grows up to 2m. It’s an understorey plant in the forest, so likes shady, humid conditions, and can be grown as a houseplant or outdoors as tropical bedding in the summer and overwintered somewhere warm.
Mine are nowhere near their full height, but that’s in part because they need potting on to grow big. On the whole, houseplants are best potted on in early spring, when they can start to make the most of the new compost and room (pot on in winter, and the lack of growth means many plants will sit in a slump of wet compost and sulk).
If in doubt, check for roots popping out of the bottom of the pot: if you can see any, it’s time to move the plant up a pot size. Robust fast-growers such as begonias can take quite a leap in pot size, whereas slow-growing ones such as cactus will resent too roomy a pot (for those plants, the rule of thumb is to move them to a pot just a centimetre bigger around the diameter). But before I get lost in potting up, I’m going to take cuttings: once you have one B. luxurians, you want more. They’re a doddle to propagate, too, because they long to put down roots. Most can be rooted in water: take a healthy shoot with several leaves and stick it in a jar of water (this is known as a tip cutting). You can also take whole leaf, wedge, cone and rhizome cuttings. Like I say, begonias like rooting a lot.
As the tip cutting sits in the water, it releases a rooting hormone, so you don’t want a huge jar of water, otherwise this gets diluted. The very fleshy-stemmed types sometimes rot in water, so start them off in compost with up to 50% perlite or grit added for drainage. Sometimes, they’ll drop all their leaves when sitting in the water and it looks as if nothing will happen, but if the stem remains firm, be patient: roots will appear eventually.
Once you have three or more roots of around 2.5cm in length, pot into compost and keep moist, but not wet, and new leaves will quickly appear.
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