the.com/bougainvillea
the diva that fakes flowers with leaves and thrives on neglect like a true icon
means A thorny tropical climbing plant whose tiny true flowers are surrounded by showy, papery, brightly colored bracts (modified leaves) that look like the real blooms.
from Named for the 18th-century French admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, whose round-the-world voyage carried a naturalist who documented the plant in Brazil. The Latinized honorific tacks an '-ea' onto his surname, the conventional botanical way of dressing a person's name up as a genus.
- fake flowers
- Colorful parts are bracts; real flowers are tiny and white
- named for
- A French admiral who never touched the plant
- thrives stressed
- Blooms harder when watered less and ignored
- armed beauty
- Hidden thorns punish anyone reaching for color
- climber
- Can scale 40 feet up walls and trees
bougainvillea spectabilis — native to brazil, named by botanist antoine de jussieu after admiral louis antoine de bougainville in 1768
bougainvillea in santorini — iconic magenta flowers covering whitewashed houses throughout the greek island, a tourism signature since the 1970s
bougainvillea glabra — smooth-leafed species from brazil, most commonly cultivated worldwide for ornamental use