Begonia humilisDryand.

WFO wfo-0000824329 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Begonia humilis, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. a Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / 2014-05-20 / obs. 911671

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 13 botanical countries

Regions where Begonia humilis is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Jamaica, Leeward Is., Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastColombiaEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaJamaicaPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.
Native distribution of Begonia humilis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Jamaica JAM
Leeward Is. LEE
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 43 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 16.4 °C 21.6 °C 24.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.0 °C 27.0 °C 31.1 °C
Annual rainfall 1,268 mm 2,473 mm 3,198 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 33 mm 259 mm 659 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 43 research-grade observations of Begonia humilis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Begonia alemanii Brade
  • Begonia guyanensis var. cearensis C.DC.
  • Begonia haematotricha hort. ex A.DC.
  • Begonia haematotricha Boiss. ex A.DC.
  • Begonia hirsuta hort.Kew ex A.DC.
  • Begonia hirsuta hort. ex A.DC.
  • Begonia humilis var. humilis
  • Begonia lokobeensis Humbert ex Keraudren & Bosser
  • Begonia lucida Haw.
  • Begonia pavoniana A.DC.
  • Begonia porteriana Fisch.et al.
  • Begonia subhumilis A.DC.
  • Pilderia erythrotricha Klotzsch ex A.DC.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.