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April 7, 2008
Our Bougainvillea
This mostly red bush is a Bougainvillea (Plantae, Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Caryophyllales, Nyctaginaceae, bougainvillea [I don't know the sub-species]).
It is extremely beautiful this time of year and will remain so throughout spring and summer and well into the fall. Even its winter, mostly green, foliage is quite attractive. The plant also grows like a bad weed and needs to be cut back every month or so during the growing season. Otherwise, our house might disappear within its ever extending foliage. Sometime next week I'll tackle this project.
In addition to all that wonderful red bracts, it also has these tiny whitish flowers. They don't do much for me.
But the plant does sport a number of features that do get ones attention, particularly when trimming time comes around. These beauties can cause some of the vilest swearing known to humankind. The good news is that most of the wounds heal over the winter.
One other thing, in late fall and early winter, when most of the bracts fall from the bush, weekly raking is required to keep even distant flowerbeds free of the now brownish things that blow all over the place with the slightest breeze.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 7, 2008 4:23 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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Comments
Beautiful, but you better keep an eye on that gutter, Duane. Bougainvillea can take it down through its sheer weight... not to mention the cleanup job come fall.
The plant comes in orange and white, too. The display at one of my neighbors across the street is a multi-color splendor. Then, there are those colorful bracts peeking out from among the branches of a 40ft-high fir farther down the street. It does like to climb and, as you note, it can get out of hand.
BTW, the campus at ASU is covered with bougainvillea. No shaded walkways anywhere on that desert campus, but lots of bougainvillae covered trellises.
Posted by: rochelle altman at April 8, 2008 3:08 AM
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