Bougainvillea Bougainvillea A love blog about bougainvillea.

What do Penn State football games & Miss Alice have in common?



Miss Alice and Penn State football games are well known for their ability to "white out".  Although, Penn State usually reserves its white-outs for the Ohio State Buckeyes, Miss Alice has no reservations.

Miss Alice is hands-down, one of our personal favorites. How often do you see the crisp and clean feeling of white bracts in landscaping? Not to often... picture a community entrance engulfed with Miss Alice; breath-taking.

She’s a giant-bract (meaning the white, flowering part is very large compared to other bougainvillea bracts), semi-dwarf, thorn-less (sort-of) variety due to her compact, slow-growing habit, and extremely low thorn count.

Pure white bracts pour out and can be enjoyed year-round, and can be maintained to stay bushy and low to the ground.  Her bright white bracts grow in large clusters and are very large, long, and elliptic.  Leaves are medium to dark green, long, and tapering to a point.

At full maturity, she's 2-3’ tall and wide. Although you can prune her to stay small and compact.

Miss Alice is a great candidate for xeriscaping, as with most bougainvillea variety, she requires minimal water once established. She's evergreen and flourishes year-round in the Southeastern U.S.

In the grim bloodbath that was Florida vs. Cold, Florida lay gasping in a pathetic shambles. Drive around, look out your window, sniff the putrid burn, and you'll know the carnage.

Grass, once green and lush, looks like dry fettucini. Palm trees have all the vitality of a paper lunch bag sprayed with starch. Leaves have the audacity to crunch under our shoes.

"It looks pretty sad," said Irene Liporto, whose pink and orange hibiscus plants are crispy and angry at the universe. Her crown of thorns have no will to live. Her pink and white bougainvillea — the prettiest thing in history — is a shadow of its former self.

"Oh, yeah, that's one of my favorites, and it looks terrible," said Liporto, who lives in St. Petersburg's Old Northeast neighborhood. "Right now, I sort of want to blindfold myself so I don't see it. It's kind of sad. I garden. I put in a lot of work."

Her pruning pal and neighbor Sue Skaggs commiserates. She has lived on Bay Street for 40 years. Her garden hasn't done this kind of death march since the 1970s, when she lost her orchids and mango trees.
Some people are frantically hosing down the brown with off-limits water.

"We've had an increase in violations in the last couple of days," said Terrie Grace, who is in charge of Pinellas County's water restriction program. The rules still apply. Same goes in other Tampa Bay area counties.
Overwatering your plants is bad anyway, experts say. For now, it's best to stand by. Don't massacre dead leaves with shears or drown them in a fit of panic. Have faith that life springs eternal.

The Old Northeast pals did a scratch test on a bougainvillea, running a fingernail over the gross brown branch. Underneath: a miraculous streak of green.