The three friends

The three friends. 20 November, 2025.

One day last November I was walking up the alley and noticed that someone had chucked out some bedding plants. They lay on the gravel, out of their pots and with very little soil on their roots, but in the November gloom you could still see a flower or two, like a lost bead.  

After a couple of days I took it into my head to try and rescue them. There were two geraniums (pelargoniums I mean), one of which had shut up shop, but the other was still making a gallant effort to produce new flowers. There was also a begonia with dark red leaves, but it was so tiny and bedraggled I didn't expect much from it.

Anyway, they were company. Back home in Swindon, I potted them up and sat them on a recycling bin in my porch, where the sun sometimes reached them. 

The three friends indoors. 11 December, 2025.

Nothing much changed through the winter. They didn't die, was about the best you could say. It was a mild winter and there was little danger of frost in the back of the porch. All the same there were a few nights when I brought them in. The induction hob seemed like the perfect spot to plonk them.

Then in April I moved back to Frome, so I passed them on to a friend with a garden. She took care of them, potted them on, kept them watered through the long dry summer. Here's what they looked like last week.

The two pelargoniums, 6 August 2026.

The begonia, 2 August 2026.

Begonia is one of the largest plant families. Aside from its 2,000 wild species there are endless hybrids and cultivars. 

There seems to be an idea that this kind of begonia, with its small pink flowers and burgundy leaves, is Begonia sparreana, endemic to Ecuador and rather threatened in its native habitat (moist tropical lowland forest). But nobody seems to be able to supply any more information. Calling it "unique and vibrant", or highlighting Ecuador on a map of South America, do not count! I suspect Wikipedia applied a random garden photo to a species stub.

Anyway, our plant is a familiar "bedding annual" (though, as it demonstrated, it is not actually an annual). It looks pretty much like Begonia 'Expresso Rose' on the RHS site.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/124228/begonia-expresso-rose-expresso-series-s/details