Cities Call Bougainvillea Plant Both a Beauty and a Beast

They’re so colorful, the little trigon sprays of vivid red and burnt orange cascading in glorious bursts from bushy vines across Orange County. They’re pretty, prolific and might as well be the county’s official flower, if it had one.

But bougainvillea plants are also messy, thorny and make a dandy home for rats, earning them a love-hate relationship with landscapers and maintenance workers countywide.

Some cities, such as Orange, have stopped planting them altogether; others, such as Dana Point, welcome them with gushy praise that teeters on the poetic. And everyone has an opinion.

“There’s a lot of bougainvillea in the city, but we’re not responsible for it,” parks supervisor Jerry Sollom of Laguna Niguel said. “We don’t use it because it’s maintenance intensive, and then there’s the thorns. It’s a great-looking plant, but, unfortunately, we can’t afford to spend that much time with it.”

Martin Pastucha, field services manager for Tustin, said the city purposely planted bougainvillea along walls that separate Tustin Ranch housing tracts from the street.

“We put it in our newer developments to add color and break up the green in the shrubs and ground cover,” he said. “It’s not that big of a pain to take care of. We trim them on a regular basis, and the color is so pretty. They make a beautiful flower.”

Bougainvillea (boo-guhn-VIHL-ee-uh) are hard to miss because of their commonly misperceived blooms. Actually, the colored petals are modified leaves called bracts that encase tiny flowers clustered inside. The bracts can be red, pink, purple, orange or pale yellow.

The plants, which love warm weather, originated in South America and are named for French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. The stalks grow thick and woody, and the plants can be hedged or trained like a vine to creep across archways and around columns.

Training, trimming and maintaining bougainvillea is a full-time job for Richard Calef, maintenance supervisor at Mission San Juan Capistrano, where bougainvillea is the signature plant. They’ve been growing on the grounds for at least 100 years.

“It’s so beautiful and comes in so many colors, you just see this sea of red or pink,” Calef said. “We’ve got one that’s 40 feet high and 20 feet wide. It’s breathtaking.”

He acknowledged that the paper-thin bracts are a maintenance challenge. Workers generally let them lie on the ground while they still show color, sweeping them up when they turn brown. The plants are heavily watered, which triggers them to bloom twice or three times year-round.

Down the street at City Hall, the plants aren’t as well received.

“They’re part of the history here, but, as a landscape person, I’d pick a different vine,” said Jack Galaviz, maintenance superintendent for San Juan Capistrano. “They get really woody and very messy, and they’re dangerous because of the thorns. They get into the drains because the petals are so light, the street sweepers just blow them around.”

The reception isn’t much better in Orange, where landscape supervisor Howard Morris called them “a landscape nightmare.”

“Sure, it’s pretty, but once you spend a day pruning it, you really learn to dislike it,” he said.

Then there’s the “vermin aspect,” according to Sollom of Laguna Niguel. Bougainvillea is a popular plant for raising little rat families because it gets so bushy and bracts falling on the lower vines create an appealingly protected habitat.

David Niederhaus, general services director in Newport Beach, said the plant’s only utility is in areas where “you don’t want people to go” because of the thickness and thorns.

It’s used for that reason in the street medians in Dana Point, but don’t vilify bougainvillea around Phil Cotton, Dana Point’s parks superintendent.

“They’re absolutely beautiful, and people really love looking at them,” Cotton said. “There’s probably nothing prettier than a bougainvillea. Orange County would be a dull place without them.”

Perspective is a weekly column highlighting trends and events that define Orange County or an in-depth look at an issue affecting the county. Readers are invited to call Los Angeles Times correspondent Jean O. Pasco at (714) 564-1052 or send an e-mail to Jean.Pasco@latimes.com