Bougainvillea Bougainvillea A love blog about bougainvillea.

Few websites let you buy bougainvillea online, this is typically due to their availability. But if you visit Bougainvillea Growers International (BGI), they have varieties of bougainvillea plants, in different mediums you can purchase, right from the comfort of your computer.

Shatter-proof Shipping

Even better, Bougainvillea Growers' breakthrough Shatter-proof technology prevents bougainvillea from dropping it's color and foliage for a whopping seven days in an enclosed truck!  With BGI's shippable bougainvillea, you'll receive bougainvillea looking as colorful and gorgeous as the day they were shipped.

Buy any 2 pk, 2lb jars, or 10lb. bag of BOUGAIN® Bougainvillea Fertilizer and have it shipped, FREE (continental US only).

BOUGAIN® 6-8-10 Plus Minors Best Selling Bougainvillea Fertilizer in the US!

Does it exist? The elusive thornless (aka: dwarf) bougainvillea DOES exist!

Helen Johnson is the only true dwarf bougainvillea that we have found to have the best growth pattern and most reliable flowering habit. This cultivar is ideal for use as groundcover, and is absolutely stunning as a mass planting. New growth opens coppery orange, maturing into a uniform pink color. Bracts are small and twisted in arrangement. Leaves are small, opening greenish-tan, maturing to a dark-green.

Miss Alice™ may have many names, but few can match her beauty.  She’s a giant-bract, semi-dwarf, thornless variety due to her compact, slow-growing habit, and extremely low thorn count.  Her heavy flowering pattern of pure white bracts can be enjoyed year-round, and can be maintained to stay bushy and low to the ground.  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.

Species

• Bougainvillea spectabilis
• Bougainvillea glabra
• Bougainvillea peruviana

Bougainvillea spectabilis is a large climber with distinctive curved thorns, and hair on stems and leaves. The bracts are crinkled, fairly large, egg-shaped, and possess colors in the rose, rusty-red, and purple. Flowers are cream in color, slender, with very hairy tubes. Leaves are large, ovate to rounded, leathery in texture and hairy underneath. The bark is pale and corky. Branching is close and short, giving rise to a very dense plant. The first species collected, it was described from dried specimens by Willdenow (1798).



Bougainvillea glabra has thinner branches that spread in many directions and have distinctive pointed triangle-shaped bracts that come in a range of whites, lilacs, mauves, and purples. Thorns are short, thin, and curved at the tips. Leaves are fairly evenly elliptical, widest about the middle. The small cream flowers are relatively big and tube-shaped. The also tend to flower virtually continuously, and often down the entire length of the branch. Originally described and named by Choisy (1849).



Bougainvillea peruviana has a branching habit that is looser and more open. This is a climbing, spiny, spreading shrub with greenish bark. Thorns (spines) are thin, straight in youth and curved when older. Leaves are thin and ovate to broadly ovate. The small roundish bracts, usually in light to dark magenta colors, are quite delicate to the touch, and are crinkly in appearance. Flowering is recurrent after strong vegetative growth in response to dry weather. This species was described and named by Humbold and Bonpland (1808).