Bougainvillea

A vigorous, thorny tropical woody vine from Brazil, grown across the warm world for one of the most spectacular floral displays in horticulture - sheets of magenta, purple, red, orange, pink, or white that can smother a wall, fence, or pergola. The vivid color, though, is not from petals: it comes from papery BRACTS (modified leaves) that surround the true flowers, which are small, slender, and white to cream. Bougainvillea spectabilis is a sprawling, climbing scrambler armed with sharp, woody thorns; in frost-free climates it reaches 15 to 40 feet, hauling itself up supports and over rooftops, but it can also be kept hard-pruned as a shrub, a hedge, or a container plant. It is frost-tender and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9b-11b; everywhere colder it is grown as a greenhouse, conservatory, or seasonal container plant and overwintered indoors. It blooms most heavily when grown lean and a little dry in blazing full sun, which is why the showiest bougainvilleas are often the ones that look slightly neglected. The quickest way to tell it from the near-identical B. glabra is touch: B. spectabilis has softly hairy (pubescent) young stems, leaf undersides, and flower-tubes and broader, more rounded bracts, where B. glabra is smooth and hairless.

A vigorous evergreen woody climber from Brazil - called primavera or buganvilia in its homeland - grown across the warm world for its long-lasting, brilliant papery bracts in magenta, purple, white, or pink. The vivid color is not from petals: it comes from those papery BRACTS (modified leaves), which surround the small, tubular, cream-colored true flowers tucked at their centers. POWO (Kew) and Flora e Funga do Brasil both record Bougainvillea glabra as native to Brazil. Left to climb it hauls itself up walls, fences, and pergolas to 10 to 30 feet, but kept pruned it makes a dense, mounding shrub; it is armed with sharp thorns and flowers hardest when grown lean, hot, and a little dry in blazing full sun. It is frost-tender and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9b-11b; everywhere colder it is grown as a greenhouse, conservatory, or container plant and overwintered indoors. Its name is the field mark: glabra means smooth, and its hairless stems and leaves - plus smaller, more triangular bracts and a freer, near-continuous bloom - are the quickest way to tell it from the softly hairy, larger-bracted B. spectabilis.