Catatan Variasi Morfologi Intraspesies Begonia Areolata Miq. Berdasarkan Koleksi Kebun Raya Cibodas, Jawa Barat

Abstract

The observation of intraspecies variation in Begonia was conducted on the collection of Begonia areolata in Cibodas Botanic Gardens, to reveal the morphological variation in species of B. areolata. Twenty-one individuals of B. areolata collected by Cibodas Botanic Gardens from mountains of Java and Sumatra islands observed based on 21 morphology characters. The analysis of grouping was conducted using UPGMA on NTSys Program version 2.1. The results of analysis showed that the intraspecies variation in B. areolata reached 36%. The character of trichome color contributed in the grouping, so that it separated B. areolata from Mt. Sibuatan with other regions. Furthermore, the combination of tricome, leaf color, and leaf venation characters had been grouped B. areolata to be three groups, i.e. (1) red leaf color – red leaf venation phenotype, (2) green leaf color – red leaf venation phenotype and (3) green leaf color – green leaf venation phenotype. The origin of collection and the vertival distribution are thought affecting the performance of morphology of B. areolata, as found in other natural Begonia. In the future, the molecular approach with more samples collected from different regions was required to clarify the results of this study.