Bougainvillea arborea

Why it works here

If you have read my list of the five plants I will never put in your yard, you know how I feel about regular bougainvillea. This is the exception, and here is why. Bougainvillea arborea grows as an upright tree with a single trunk and a rounded crown. It is thornless or nearly so, it does not throw twenty foot canes over the neighbor's fence, and it needs almost no pruning. The bracts are lavender to purple, and the tiny true flowers inside them are lightly fragrant, which is unusual in this family. It blooms on and off all year instead of in violent flushes. Botanically it is treated as a form of Bougainvillea glabra, which UF/IFAS assessed and cleared for the whole state. It is not on any invasive list. What it gives you is the bougainvillea color without the bougainvillea behavior. Honest part: it is a bougainvillea. The sap can give you a rash, and if it freezes hard and regrows from the base, I have seen reports of thorns coming back on that new wood. Keep it as one trunk and you keep the tree you paid for.

Care

Full sun, sharp drainage, and neglect. Water to establish and then only in real drought, because a dry bougainvillea flowers and a wet one grows leaves. No fertilizer beyond a little compost in spring. Train a single leader and remove any shoots from the base as soon as you see them. Prune lightly after a bloom cycle if you need to shape it. Wear gloves for the sap.

Common problems

Basal shoots. Remove them. If the plant is grafted, anything from below the graft is thorny rootstock, and even on an own root plant the regrowth can be thornier than the tree. This is the one maintenance rule.

Cold. Young trees need cover in a freeze. Established ones shrug off a light one.

Bougainvillea caterpillars, the loopers that chew the leaves ragged. Cosmetic. Hand pick or let the birds have them.

Sap rash. Gloves and sleeves when you prune.

Spent bracts hang on a while rather than dropping clean. Some people mind.