Irritating Plant of the Month August 2020 - the overheated begonia

Regular readers will know that most plants I label as irritating is because I am irritated with myself. This is a prime example of this genre. Dear Reader I present to you the Begonia koelzii.

What's wrong with this I hear you say, it looks a fine healthy plant.  Yes it was back in September 2019 when I bought it from my good friends at Swines Meadow Farm Nursery.  I looked after it carefully, I made sure it got through the winter ok.  It was a happy plant.

and then,

and then a few weeks ago I had to empty the conservatory as I needed to replace the floor.  I put all the inside plants outside as the weather was so good I was fairly sure they would all be ok for a week or so whilst I sorted out the floor.  I was right, the plants have had a wild time outside and are looking good.

apart from this one.

I made a mistake, a serious mistake.  I did not check the label before popping it into the greenhouse to make sure it would be ok.  I could not have done anything more disasterous.  It melted in front of my eyes.  Within a couple of hours it was wilting and looking burned.  I knew I had done something terrible especially as this begonia is meant to be hardy.  I think what makes it worse is that I had no reason to put it in the greenhouse as I had not done this with the other plants.  I really do not know what I was thinking.  I took it outside as fast as I could in the hope it would recover.

and then I checked up again on what conditions it prefers.  I moved it swiftly into the Courtyard Garden, the nursery area for a lot of my plants which is also delightfully shady.  It is a really difficult area for most plants, but for this begonia it sounded just what it needed.  Within days it was rewarding me by wagging some new foliage at me.  I am not sure if this was a 'thank you' or a 'I surrender whatever I did wrong I promise not to do again' wagging.

A few more days and look, the plant is on the road to recovery.

Phew!  It just goes to show what a good plant it is as it has forgiven me.  I shall be more careful in future.