Guwahati, Nov. 11 -- A small flowering plant growing beside a perennial stream in Arunachal Pradesh's Upper Siang district has turned out to be a species new to science, adding to the rich but still incompletely documented plant diversity of the Eastern Himalaya.

Named Begonia siangensis, the plant was discovered during a floristic exploration of the Siang River basin in 2024. Researchers found it in a shaded habitat between Bomdo and Jengging, at an elevation of around 600 metres.

The discovery has been formally described in the Edinburgh Journal of Botany.

The species belongs to the section Platycentrum, a group of begonias that is particularly diverse in Northeast India. Although it resembles the previously known Begonia iridescens,...