Where does Bougainvillea come from?
Bougainvillea comes from South America. The thorny, brightly coloured climber grows wild in the tropical forests of Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina, and reached Europe's gardens only in the early 1800s.
Collected at Rio de Janeiro
The first European to describe the plant was Philibert Commerson, the botanist on the French navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville's voyage around the world in 1766–1769. At Rio de Janeiro, Commerson and his assistant Jeanne Baret collected a flowering vine, which he named after the expedition's leader. The New York Botanical Garden says Baret probably deserves the credit for the find. The name was first published, as 'Buginvillæa', by the botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1789.
Into the world's gardens
In the early 19th century the first two species, Bougainvillea spectabilis and Bougainvillea glabra, were brought to Europe. Nurseries in France and Britain soon sold them as far as Australia, and Kew Gardens sent plants it had grown to British colonies around the world. The genus has about eighteen species, but the popular garden varieties come mainly from just three of them, B. spectabilis, B. glabra and B. peruviana, crossed again and again. It is now the national flower of Grenada.
Why people say the Mediterranean
Bougainvillea looks at home on Mediterranean balconies because the climate suits it. It loves heat, tolerates drought and salty sea air, but is sensitive to frost, so it is grown across the Mediterranean Basin as well as in Florida, California and South India. At home in South America it has many local names: santa-rita around the River Plate, veranera in Colombia, papelillo in Peru and trinitaria in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Bougainvillea ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Jeanne Baret ↗ · nybg.org ↗ · epubs.icar.org.in ↗
