The Bougainvillea Thread

[fabindia]

Bougainvillea, sometimes called the paper flower, is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers. They seem pretty hardy, which good given my recent massacre of them. Hence this thread to track how well they grow back. They are a plant that thrives in hot climates, not a plant we could grow in UK.

First though, a bit of background to the massacre. I recently dragged, Wendy, my long suffering wife, to our local garden nursery and she spotted a really nice Jasmine tree. She wanted me to get it to plant just outside our porch so that its perfume would drift in of an evening. To do that though, I needed to clear a space in the established patch of bougainvillea. So, I quite roughly tore three of the bushes out (they are quite thorny and didn't dig up easily), pruned them back as best I could, and re-planted them in small semi-circle round the newly planted jasmine tree.

No surprise then that they quickly dropped most of their green leaves. What is surprising is how quickly they are growing back. I also too a few hard wood cuttings and these are already growing new leaves. Fingers crossed then, I'll end up with two or three viable new plants.

I thought I would use this thread to track how well they grow back. Should be interesting, though I hope not disappointing.


A photo of the flower


Rather sorry looking after moving


Some re-growth already


A few cuttings already pushing out some new growth

[lancashire lass]

oooh, I'm liking your posts fabindia - yes, I remember the thorny Bougainvillea shrubs (in South Africa) .... We had a dark purple one in our garden (on the bottom of the slope - it used to be all lawn and then it appeared out of nowhere, presumably a cutting from some other garden found its way there and started growing) Evil thing trying to trim it - once found a dried snake skin caught on the thorn (the snake might have used the thorn to help take the skin off) so we didn't bother trimming it after that!

Near where I went to primary school was an outdoor public swimming pool - over a pergola between the 2 changing rooms were beautiful pink Bougainvilleas. I remember those being trimmed back severely one year and it took them a good couple of years to recover.

[fabindia]

What is interesting is they way they grow apparently multi-coloured ones here.

I think each plant is only a single colour but what they do is graft a number of different coloured ones on to a single parent planet to produce very a colourful display.

[fabindia]

Here is how they look today. Not fully recovered but looking much better and full of flowers.

[lancashire lass]

they look lovely

[Mo]

Things do regenerate, don't they. Which is good in this case, but you've reminded me that I must go and have another try at killing the berberis that got its roots into the drains outside the bathroom. It's round the corner where I can't see the green leaves sneaking back.