If the entire flora of Bougainvillea is white, why are these plants considered to be so attractive and bright? The reply is that it is not the flowers that draw the attention of various people but it is the bracts!!! These have tiny white flowers with the shape of a trumpet in bunch of 3, bounded by 3 or 6 brightly or brilliantly colored bracts. These are in fact specialized or modified leaves; more often than not a little smaller compared to green foliage leaves and their intention or purpose is to exert a pull on pollinators. In the case of Bougainvilleas, the bracts can be pink, purple, magenta, orange, red, white, yellow, or a mix of colors. Poinsettia is one more case of a good-looking plant, where the intense red color that we are well-known with at Christmas occasion is in fact the Poinsettia bract and not a flower. People often cover their houses with these flowers of various colors and they seem to be so appealing.



The multicolored bracts are amongst the largely photographed subjects in Vallarta. If you carry a camera to the tropical Paradise, Vallarta, do ensure you have got so much of spare film or memory as it is pretty easy to get excited or carried away clicking snaps after you see it once!!!

If you are lucky enough to be 1 out of the fifty thousand North Americans, the next time a tourist to the area remarks on all the attractive Bougainvillea flowers, you can be really smart by letting them know that what they are appreciating are in fact bracts and all flowers of this plant are actually white! The lively color is improved by the 3 large leaves that are around ever flower. It actually has cascading, spiny stems which finish with multicolored bracts of orange, red, purple and other shades to protect small white, unnoticeable flowers.

A little frostiness will not destroy the plant, but you can almost immediately look forward to all the bracts and leaves to fall off. In such a case, the plant will grow again if not exposed to much cold conditions for longer period.

This plant grows rapidly throughout rainy season - usually between three- five meter in a single raining period - then when the rainy season ends the growth of the flowers begins and maintains for the entire dry season approximately until six months non-stop.