Bougainvillea again

Every morning when I walk with the dogs, I count the veranera in bloom.  Latest count is 31 out of 36--but peak blooming season is past.  The heavy rains are beating the flowers off the plants, and I don't expect that a good third of the plants, relatively young ones, will keep their blooms much longer.  Now comes the struggle to nurse the three that I've recently planted through the rainy season.  They were big strong plants with good root systems, and I have high hopes.

One really pleasant  surprise this year was the transformation of the bougainvillea in the picture from just your ordinary, everyday, spectacular display to a gorgeous eye-catching bicolor.  It was completely red last year, and started out that way in January, but now sports salmon flowers as well.  I have no idea why bougainvillea do this.  On the porch we have a really beautiful red and white one that is too small this year to risk in the ground.  I'd like to see it about twice as big before I plant it.

Last weekend, we fertilized nearly all the plants and trees for which that's appropriate, including the bougainvillea.  With this week's rains, the plants have responded enthusiastically, so much so that I pruned this morning, taking some of the cuttings in hopes of rooting new plants.  I haven't had much luck in that regard, but I'm pretty sure that's because I'm using cuttings that are too tender.  It does seem that it's better to use at least semi-wooded cuttings.  However, most of what I did today was snip off new growth, gritting my teeth as I did so because of course that's where the new flowers will come.  I console myself with the thought that the season is almost over, and I need to restrain rampant growth.  I've been gratified to see that one of my questionable plants from last year has suddenly taken off, sprouting two very sturdy looking stems.  But one is still worrisome; it's holding its own but it has to do a lot better than that before the rains come in earnest in July.  There's time, but I hover over it like a mother hen with a non-too-sturdy chick.

The Resurrection Plant

I have no idea what the scientific name of this plant is, but locally it's called "the resurrection plant". Why? Well, we were told, because the flower emerges before the leaves. No doubt there is some religious symbolism here that I've missed, but I have to confess that the answer left me just as mystified as before the question!

The leaves die back in December, at the start of the dry season, and the flowers begin to appear at the start of the rainy season. The leaves follow the flower shortly after blooming. The plant is found everywhere--along roadsides, in abandoned or neglected gardens, everywhere. It naturalizes easily and becomes a huge clump.

Since I originally published this article, Mary has gone slightly crazy taking pictures of the emerging resurrection plants on our property--over 100 of them! tells you who has the more time around here. She's published what she considers the best of them here in a beautiful set. You'll even get scientific names--hows that for an incentive to go over there?


One thing I do know is that it's part of the ginger family. Like below. Which is an example of one of the 80 (I believe) species of ginger, many of which look wildly different from the others. There's still another flowering species (which used to be considered a ginger but now have a family of their own) called costas, which have gently spiraling stems. We have 3 in back of the house, but the plants are too young to flower yet. Maybe next year. None of these gingers are the eating variety, which is only one species.

I really like this brand of flowering ginger. While this one is a red ginger, there's a pink one as well that's far more delicate-looking.

Once established (and the gingers seem to need a year or two after planting to think things over), they're very drought resistant and flower all year round. They make a wonderful border plant for our driveway. They're also very easy to propagate, which is nice for me, since I need a couple dozen more to complete the border to the house.

Bloomin' Trees!

Sitting on the porch this morning, with my third cup of coffee, dreamily looking out at the showy spectacle of the bougainvillea blazing away in bloom (they have no shame), I finally really noticed one of our nance trees, which has been in bloom for a while (as usual, click on the photo to get a larger image). In fact, it's past peak bloom and has started to fruit.


Nance is an edible tropical fruit when it comes from cultivated trees. We have about a half dozen mature "wild" trees. When the fruit ripens, flocks of visiting parrots descend on the trees and stay, eating and chattering away, until the fruit is gone.

The flowers are really pretty, I think. I love the combination of colors, of the yellow and orange. You can just see some tiny fruit that's just formed.

Veranera

When I saw the bougainvillea here in Panama--and it's everywhere!--I immediately knew the real meaning of lust. I lusted after those plants--they are so utterly beautiful. Huge, with large sprays of flowers in shades of red, blue, lavender, orange, white. I wanted them all.

And so the first thing I did when we moved into our house was to buy bougainvillea. Just 4 plants. And put them out on our south boundary. Thinking that it was going to be easy. After all--everyone had bougainvillea, right? And it was obvious that it didn't need a lot of care.

Yes--but there was a caveat to that. No, it doesn't need a lot of care--once it's established. And there lies the kicker. Once it's established.

Despite it practically being the signature plant of the tropics, especially in the Caribbean area, bougainvillea did not originate in Central America but in Brasil. It was named after a French botanist who discovered/described the plant.

Brasil is huge, much bigger than the continental US. In addition, it's not a rectangle spread out horizontally but a land mass that extends from just a tad north of the equator down past the Tropic of Capricorn to slightly more than 30 degrees south latitude; Brasil encompasses far more degrees of latitude than does the continental US. Which means that Brasil hosts a very large number of recognizable climate zones ( many more than the continental US), from equatorial and subequatorial through tropical, semi-arid and various subdivisions of temperate. So when you say a plant originated in Brasil, you can't automatically assume anything about the climate in which it grows best.

It rains here in Panama, a lot. And it turns out that bougainvillea really isn't that thrilled with a whole lot of rain. Tolerant, yes but really thrive? No. in fact, because it flowers during the dry season, it's called veranera here, or "summer plant". It doesn't like wet feet, so you have to be really careful of drainage--that in a country like Panama where the annual rainfall is measured in feet. Also, the roots are fragile and it takes a while for a decent root ball to amass. I planted 45+ bougainvillea, and as of yesterday, 34 have survived (of which half are flowering this year), and that doesn't include about a half dozen replacement plants I put in last year. It takes at least 2 years for the plant to get established, for some varieties longer. The most vigorous is the red type which--no surprise there--is the most commonly seen.

Not only do you have to worry about the plant's natural fragility at a young age, but leaf cutter ants find bougainvillea a gourmet meal. We have a beautiful white one that was growing vigorously and which I had pruned so that it was a lovely bushy plant, about 2 ft tall. Last year, about a week after I had looked at it (it's down near one corner of our rectangular property), I happened to be weedeating in that area--and the plant was completely stripped of leaves and shortened by 6-8 inches. Leaf cutters had stripped it and chewed off--precise cuts like with a pruning shears--the tender growth. With pleading and coaxing and generous doses of fertilizer, the plant is finally making a comeback this year. That's another thing I've noticed--bougainvillea does not make a rapid comeback to adverse conditions when young.

Once established, though--once they develop that thick trunk--they're pretty much impervious to anything. Great drought-resistant plants.

BUT despite all the headaches and heartbreaks, when you discover that no matter what you've done, some plants simply have not survived the torrential downpours of winter, they're worth the effort. On the top of the page is a picture of our oldest veranera--one plant is now 4 years old, the others three.

There are some spectacular specimens of veranera around the neighborhood. Here are some photos.

Seasons

When you live in temperate zones, you think of the seasons in terms of temperature changes: cold in winter, hot in summer, mild and fresh in spring, cool and crisp in autumn. There are variations on this theme--some places only have 3 seasons. but still, what you're used to seeing as seasonal change--leaves turning color, lack of growth--is the result of temperature changes.

But here in Panama, 9 degrees north of the equator, we just don't get that kind of seasonal variation in temperature. While my records are far from complete (we intend to get a weather station in October), I've never recorded lows less than 62 degrees. Highs are trickier, given you can't put a sensor, no matter where you live, out in the sun. But so far, I've never seen temperatures above 92, and then maybe just 2-3 days during the year.

But we do have seasons, two of them: the rainy season, which is called inverno, or winter and the dry or drought season, verano or summer. This is the seasonal climate drama, going from drought to increasing rain starting in April or May that ends up with the torrential downpours of September and October to a tapering off to the beginning of summer in January, marked by high winds. Due to the wind patterns, the rainy season is dominated by weather from the Pacific--here in Potrerillos, you watch the rain clouds roll in from the south. The dry season results from winds from the Caribbean, keeping the high moisture Pacific clouds pushed offshore. I'm sure that's when the northern part of Panama has its wet season, but there is a range of mountains--the Cordillera Central which includes Volcan Barú to our north, that causes those clouds to dump their rain long before the winds hit here.

But there is another way of looking at seasons, and that's in terms of plant life cycles.

Because of the tropical climate, there are flowering trees, shrubs and plants all year long--just not the same ones. " Amaryllis"--what everyone calls amaryllis (image)-- grows easily outside. A few years ago, I planted a bulb I got from somewhere and lo! in December, there were blooms! Amaryllis, like other lilies and tulips, naturalizes easily. this season, we had a steady succession of blooms from late November until February. I'm going to have to separate the bulbs soon.

But there is a dizzying variety of flowering vegetation--something new--whether tree, shrub, or plant-- comes into season every month. Every Panamanian home, no matter how poor, how humble, has flowers and flowering trees of some sort, and some gardens are spectacular. I have no idea what most of them are, except that I love to look at them, and they make Panama a paradise.

Some Volcan Flora or How To Make A Jungle

It does seem in line with my life that, after starting a blog about living in Potrerillos, the first real entry should be about a town in another valley about an hour and a half from here. Last month, we went to visit a friend of Mary's there--a fellow amateur botanist; Carla and her husband Angel are heliconia enthusiasts and travel some distances in order to collect different species.

What, you say, is a heliconia? I've wasted the prime spot at the beginning of this post to show you an example.

Let me make it clear--I'm not interested in differentiating between two species of the same plant that look identical to me. I leave that joy to others. In fact, I'm not that interested in identifying just about any plant, except by its local name. Maybe. Depending on what I have to do that day. To me, it is a royal waste of time, a monumental bore but then such efforts keep Mary happy and me free to play computer solitaire. I figure it's enough to know the difference between a head of lettuce and, say, a poisonous toadstool. All else is superfluous.

So that's the only botanical information you're going to get. Since this was the first time I'd ever seen this particular heliconia, I feel I have the right to name it according to the LaGow Classification System of Indifference; I now call it Heliconia whatever. Look at that flower--there are hundreds of species, it seems to me, that look exactly or nearly exactly like that. We have a few, thanks to Angel and Carla. As far as I'm concerned, their major virtue is that they naturalize rapidly, and I'm all for covering the space outside of the fence with something that reduces mowing, ups the privacy index, and is beautiful to boot.

But Angel and Carla have other plants. Maybe if I do learn what they are, I'll edit this post to include them.

However, I do know Vitoria amazonica--the Amazon water lily. Angel and Carla have put in ponds, and I was both astonished and delighted to see the giant pads floating on the surface as we drove up to the house. These are not as big as the ones I saw in Brasil on the "Amazon" River, but then nothing is as big as it is in Brasil.


Yet another flower from Carla and Angel's finca.

What Carla and Angel have done with their 5.5 acres is remarkable. Originally, it was pretty bare of trees. The area is heavily agricultural--not only farming but dairy operations as well. The land was probably used for pasture. Given how fast things grow here, it's just a question of time as to when the jungle will reclaim any piece of ground. But Angel and Carla managed that process, which is what I found impressive. They went into the surrounding jungle and collected saplings, shrubs, etc and planted them on their land, leaving plenty of room for heliconias and other plants that they wished to introduce. Their land borders a year-round stream, from which they get water for irrigation--the heliconias demand it during the dry season. Their property looks much bigger than it really is, thanks to the paths they've constructed around and through the plantings. 7 years later, it looks as if it's always been there. Angel talks about working with the jungle, improving it. I came away as ignorant as ever about species identification, but with plenty of food for thought about what to do with our place.

The situations, however, are not identical. They don't have the eroded, rocky "soil" we do. We have a much harder task, but not insuperable. Looks like the rains have started a bit early, so I can start working with the section of jungle we have, and improving it.