Bougainvillea spectabilis
Content
Description
Woody vine, armed, high-climbing, or tree to 12 m; branches flexuous, greyish or reddish-brown, usually copiously fulvous-villous, sometimes glabrate; spines to 4 cm long, stout, straight or curved. Leaves petiolate; blade broadly ovate to suborbicular or rounded-ovate, 5-10 x 2.5-6.5 cm, abruptly acute or acuminate at apex, rounded to acutish at base and often short-decurrent, sparsely short-villous above, often glabrate in age, usually densely villous beneath. Pseudanthia 3-flowered, peduncle 6-17 mm long, slender; bracts pink or purplish-red, ovate or broadly ovate, 2-5 x 1.7-3.1 cm, abruptly acute or acuminate or sometimes obtuse at apex, subcordate at base, sparsely puberulent or short-villous. Perianth 1.5-3 cm long, tube green, densely short-pubescent with spreading, straight, to 1 mm long hairs, lower part veined but not prominently angled below, limb 6-7 mm wide, lobes ovate-triangular, subobtuse, yellowish above; stamens 7-10, often 8. Anthocarp oblong-ellipsoid, 11-14 x 5 mm, 5-ribbed, greyish-green, densely short-villous.
Distribution
French Guiana present, Guianas cultivated, Southern America, tropical and subtropical areas cultivated
Brazil; widely cultivated in tropical and subtropical areas as an ornamental, including in the Guianas; 1 collection studied from French Guiana: Route de Baduel, Ile de Cayenne, cultivated, Hoff 5072 (CAY).
Notes
A specimen of Bougainvillea ×buttiana Holttum & Standl. (, B. glabra Choisy × B. spectabilis Willd. ), a hybrid with bracts crimson or orange, much crisped, and thus differing from the two species treated above which have bracts essentially purple or magenta (varying to white, pink, salmon or purple), not crisped, was collected in 1945 from a cultivated plant at Mazaruni station, Guyana, det. Sandwith. Apart from the bract characteristics mentioned above, it keys to the parent B. glabra , with which it shares a distinctly angled perianth-tube, with antrorsely curved, to 0.5 mm long hairs.