How to Identify Bougainvillea Plants

Identify bougainvillea plants by their foliage and blossoms.

Many gardeners admire the colorful, vining bougainvillea as it twines itself energetically around anything it grows near. With full sunlight and careful attention to its watering and fertilizing needs, a bougainvillea will thrive and grow into a large specimen plant that will garner attention as a focal point of a landscape. As you encounter plants in other gardens and greenhouses, look for the characteristic foliage and blossoms of the plants to help you identify bougainvillea.

Instructions

1. Find a picture of a bougainvillea plant in a gardening book. Lacking a gardening book, visit the Washington State University Plant List webpage, which shows several close-up photographs of a bougainvillea.

2. Look closely at the woody growth of a bougainvillea to help you identify this plant. Often a bougainvillea will have several trunk stems that vine and twist together from the base of the plant. It is from these vining base stems that the upper vines spread out to grow and climb. The upper vines often sport thorns along the stems. The oldest bougainvillea stems change gradually from green to a dull brown.

3. Examine the distinctive blossoms of a bougainvillea plant. The colorful portion of the blossom actually is not a petal at all, but rather a "bract" (a special leaf that resembles a petal in color). Bougainvillea bracts may be a wide variety of colors, including pink, lavender, red, orange and golden yellow. The actual bougainvillea flower sits on top of the colored bracts and is quite small with yellow or white petals.

4. Notice the leaves of the bougainvillea, which are distinctive and abundant. The leaves alternate along the stems, with mature leaves being between 2 and 4 inches in length. Depending upon the bougainvillea variety, the leaves may be oval or heart-shaped with pointed tips. The leaves also vary in color, with some being lighter or darker shades of green and others even exhibiting variegated colors of green and white.

5. Identify bougainvillea plants by their growing habits and shapes. Bougainvillea may grow as a shrub or as a climbing vine and the blossoms cover the stems throughout the year. A large bougainvillea plant may grow to widths of between 15 and 40 feet, depending upon how extensively a gardener prunes it.

Tips & Warnings

• Bougainvillea plants grow in USDA regions 9B through 11.

References

• Washington State University: Plant List
• University of Hawaii at Manoa: Bougainvillea