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Bougainvillea ( or ) is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers. Different authors accept between four and 18 species in the genus. They are native plants of South America from Brazil west to Peru and south to southern Argentina (Chubut Province). Bougainvillea are also known as buganvilla (Spain), bugambilia (Mexico and Philippines), Napoleón (Honduras), veranera (Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama), trinitaria (Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic & Venezuela), Santa Rita (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) or papelillo (northern Peru). The vine species grow anywhere from 1 to 12 m (3 to 40 ft.) tall, scrambling over other plants with their spiky thorns. The thorns are tipped with a black, waxy substance. They are evergreen where rainfall occurs all year, or deciduous if there is a dry season. The leaves are alternate, simple ovate-acuminate, 4–13 cm long and 2–6 cm broad. The actual flower of the plant is small and generally white, but each cluster of three flowers is surrounded by three or six bracts with the bright colours associated with the plant, including pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white, or yellow. ''Bougainvillea glabra'' is sometimes referred to as "paper flower" because the bracts are thin and papery. The fruit is a narrow five-lobed achene. ''Bougainvillea'' are relatively pest-free plants, but may suffer from worms, snails and aphids. The larvae of some Lepidoptera species also use them as food plants, for example the giant leopard moth (''Hypercompe scribonia''). ==History== The first European to describe these plants was Philibert Commerçon, a botanist accompanying French Navy admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville during his voyage of circumnavigation of the Earth, and first published for him by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1789.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.tropicos.info/Name/40030049?projectid=30 )〕 It is possible that the first European to observe these plants was Jeanne Baré, Commerçon's lover and assistant who was an expert in botany; because she was not allowed on ship as a woman, she disguised herself as a man in order to make the journey (and thus became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe). Twenty years after Commerçon's discovery, it was first published as 'Buginvillæa' in Genera Plantarum by A.L. de Jussieu in 1789.〔(Jussieu, A.L. de. Genera Plantarum )〕 The genus was subsequently spelled in several ways until it was finally corrected to 'Bougainvillea' in the Index Kewensis in the 1930s. Originally, ''B. spectabilis'' and ''B. glabra'' were hardly differentiated until the mid-1980s when botanists recognized them to be totally distinct species. In the early 19th century, these two species were the first to be introduced into Europe, and soon, nurseries in France and England did a thriving trade providing specimens to Australia and other faraway countries. Meanwhile, Kew Gardens distributed plants it had propagated to British colonies throughout the world. Soon thereafter, an important event in the history of bougainvillea took place with the discovery of a crimson specimen in Cartagena, Colombia, by Mrs. R.V. Butt. Originally thought to be a distinct species, it was named ''B. buttiana'' in her honour. However, it was later discovered to be a natural hybrid of a variety of ''B. glabra'' and possibly ''B. peruviana'' - a "local pink bougainvillea" from Peru. Natural hybrids were soon found to be common occurrences all over the world. For instance, around the 1930s, when the three species were grown together, many hybrid crosses were created almost spontaneously in East Africa, India, the Canary Islands, Australia, North America, and the Philippines. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bougainvillea」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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