Trailing begonia Cascade 6 colour mix - Begonia Pendula

The Begonia Pendula Cascade mix, or trailing tuberous begonia mix, offers 6 vibrant colours to flower hanging baskets and planters in partial shade all summer long. The plants develop flexible stems adorned with large double flowers, creating a beautiful cascading effect. Easy to grow in fresh, well-drained compost, they can be kept from year to year by overwintering the tubers.

Belonging to the Begoniaceae family, these tuberous plants are hybrids of Begonia × tuberhybrida; the Pendula group brings together selections with flexible, pendulous stems, inherited from the species B. boliviensis. Cascade mix refers to a mixture of cultivars from the Pendula group and the Cascade series, covering six colours (pink, salmon, scarlet, white, yellow, orange).
From a botanical perspective, these plants are non-hardy tuberous perennials: they grow from a flattened tuber, a storage organ that goes dormant in winter. The habit is low, dense, trailing, and even tiered, with fleshy and brittle stems. It reaches 20 to 30 cm in height and trails 30 to 50 cm in a hanging basket. The leaves are asymmetrical, ovate to pointed, 6 to 12 cm long, often glossy, medium green, dark green or bronze depending on the selection. The flowers, which appear from June to October, are monoecious: the larger, double male flowers with numerous petals alternate with smaller, simpler female flowers, equipped with a winged ovary; the corolla diameter varies from 6 to 10 cm in the Pendula series. The plant goes dormant in autumn, as soon as the foliage yellows; the tuber must be kept dry at 8–10 °C throughout the winter.

Plant trailing Cascade begonias in hanging baskets or planters, sheltered from scorching sun, wind, and driving rain. They pair well with trailing fuchsias (‘Marinka’ or ‘Swingtime’), with New Guinea impatiens for their floral mass, and with coleus for their decorative foliage. They can also be combined with other non-trailing tuberous begonias (Collection of 15 Grandiflora Begonias) to add dimension to large containers.

The botanical species at the origin of the "Pendula" lives in cloud forests and on damp cliffs of the Andes mountain range (Bolivia, Peru, north-western Argentina), where nights remain cool; these conditions explain their cultivation requirements.
The story of tuberous begonias began in the 1860s when the collector Richard Pearce introduced B. boliviensis and B. veitchii to Europe; these species, successfully presented in Paris in 1867, served as parents for the first major hybrid, B. × sedenii, paving the way for the pendula lines that decorate our hanging baskets and shaded balconies today.