Plant Files: An Impossible Bougainvillea

While riding my bike about in Sarasota, Florida, I came across a bougainvillea that is truly outstanding, and probably impossible.

Impossible because these two utterly different bloom colors look like they are on the exact same plant. The colors are almost evenly distributed across the plant(s), not blobbing up into fat sections of white versus purple. The leaves are identical on the purple and white sets, but the bloom colors are fully separated and not on the same stems. I tried to dig in there to see where the stems connect and was stabbed multiple times for my efforts.

Logic would dictate that these are two bougainvillea's that have grown together and that may be true. But their leaves are identical. There is always a color, shape, or even texture difference with variegated bougainvillea leaves that goes along with their bloom colors.

I was distressed that I don't carry a cut-and-run propagation kit on my bicycle. I really want to know if it's one plant or two producing this dramatic color difference.

Upon doing research, I found it is possible that this is a planting of a 'White Stripe' bougainvillea and a 'Blueberry Ice'. If so, it's still the most impressive mixed color planting I've ever seen. The illusion of it being a single plant with two sets of hugely different colors is flawless.

-K.C.