Tag Archives: bougainvillea

Found! Maybe the worst plants of the year.

I found one of the worst plants I have seen a long time in a Sydney garden centre. Vile, just vile. Variegated bougainvillea. ‘Novelty plants’ say I, sniffily.

The plant retail market has always had a penchant for novelty plants. I am guessing many customers cry, “Oh that is unusual! I must have that!” They are the plants that tend to be one season wonders in retail, although sometimes you may come across a survivor in a garden. Too many of them are variegated forms of a perfectly good original and most of these variegations are chance discoveries rather than the result of a controlled breeding programme. To this day I remember a nasty variegated oleander in Spain – yellow and green foliage with flowers that may have been kindly described as Paris pink when contrasted with dark green foliage but just looked dirty pink against the yellow foliage. There was a new spirea everywhere in the UK on one trip maybe 15 years ago, sporting the same unattractive colour combination. It clearly made a strong impression on me at the time because I have never forgotten how unappealing it was. Similarly, I still rate the Rhododendron ‘President Roosevelt’ as the most hideous rhododendron I have ever seen and we used to specialise in rhododendrons in the nursery.

Judging by the extra rows of the white one, Australian gardeners are as enamoured with white flowers as New Zealand gardeners. In this case, I think that is a mistake.

Gardeners in climates with lower light levels are a great deal more enamoured with variegated plants than we are here because they can light up a bleak scene and add colour. In our bright light, those variegations burn readily, unless they are in deep shade and a green and white (or yellow) leafy plant with brown edges and splotches is not attractive at all.

Not just vile, in my opinion, but insipid too, in white. And my money is on those white bracts burning in the Antipodean sunshine.

I am unconvinced anyone needs these variegated bougainvillea and I am pretty sure Australian gardeners will have as many problems with sunburned variegations as we do here in Aotearoa NZ. They have similar clarity of light and very bright sunshine. Mind you, I did a quick search on variegated bougainvillea and I see they are not uncommon and attract some fans around the world with selections which are considerably more awful than these.

I am fond of bougainvilleas but they are not a good long-term option for the faint-hearted. Our one specimen is huge and showy but r a m p a n t. It needs drastic action to restrain it once a year and this is a job that I am glad Zach has taken over because the many thorns are very sharp. Fortunately, it decays quickly so we can prune and thin, stacking the lengths at its base and they rot down to very little over the following year. Ours is so old that it largely holds itself up so at least we don’t need to tie it to a frame.

Bougainvilliea in Xishuangbanna in southern China
And in Sermoneta in Italy

I like to photograph bougainvilleas around the world because, like jacarandas and poinsettias, they seem to be a universally popular plant in areas where they can be grown. I still think the cerise one we have and the red are the showiest and cleanest. I first saw a pale orange-yellow form in Greece – popular on the isle of Kalymnos from memory, but I can’t find photos of it in my files. I wasn’t sure I liked it much; it looked a bit insipid. We saw triple-grafted plants in a nursery in Bali – three colours on one root-stock and they were an interesting novelty for container growing. I had forgotten it came in white as well until I saw it in the Sydney garden centre last month and all I can think is that yes, it is possible to take a spectacularly showy plant and turn it into the most insipid option of all!

Those variegated bougainvillea are unlikely to ever be as charming as this one, also in Sermoneta.
and in Fiumucino near Rome airport.
Golden in Melbourne, though it might ensnare passing pedestrians.

Flowering this week – our rather rampant bougainvillea

Decidedly rampant, extremely spiny but quite spectacular - the bougainvillea

Decidedly rampant, extremely spiny but quite spectacular - the bougainvillea

Not, as we assumed, originating in the Bougainville Islands, but named for the French explorer, Louis Antoine de Bougainville and hailing from South America. We think this form is glabra, from Brazil. There is nothing rare about these scrambling climbers and they are appreciated throughout the temperate and tropical world for their display which can be all year round in latitudes close to the Equator. Here they peak in summer to autumn. It is not the insignificant flowers that make the show but the coloured bracts which surround the flowers and hang on for a long time. The colours range from the royal purple of this variety through cerise, red, pink, lilac, orange, gold and white. Left to their own devices , these can be formidable plants. Ours smothered a dead tree to around ten or fifteen metres high, and a little shy of that figure in both width and depth until the host tree rotted and fell over bringing down most of the bougainvillea with it. It then became a major mission because one of the other characteristics of this genus is its many sharp thorns.

Most of what are sold now are hybrids and they are not left to their own wayward habits as we have done. They are easy enough to trim and shape when small, sometimes trained as standards. We saw some really interested topiary specimens in Bali where three different colours had been grafted onto one stem and then trained to shape as a curious container plant. They are also recommended for hedging and with their thorny ways, they may be just the ticket to deter burglars in crime-prone areas with a mild climate.