All over sunny California you can encounter colorful bursts of Bougainvillea waving hello. Bougainvillea is a is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees originally coming from South America. This striking plant is perfect for our climate and can bloom almost all year around. They are drought tolerant and actually bloom more with less water!
The blooms can vary from white, to pink, orange, red, deep red and purple. While white isn't as common for some reason, the other colors are quite common and can even come in two colored varieties, like pink and orange, and with foliage that also has two shades of green. The blooms are actually colored leaves, called bracts, and the tiny, flowering centers are the actual flowers.
Bougainvillea does well in climates 9b-11. If you want to check what zone you are in you can with the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. If you are near frost zones, they don't like to be too cold, so plant near buildings for more shelter. They need at least 6 hours of sun a day to be happy plants. Bougainvilleas are wonderfully drought tolerant once established and do better with less water, resulting in more blooms, yay!
The incredible versatility of Bougainvilleas are that they can grow to 25 feet in different directions! Many people train them over fences and arbors, but they will grow over almost anything! They don't latch on like some vines, so they do need support and training to guide them where you want them to grow.
There are dwarf varieties too if you do not want to have one grow so big. They do have thorns, so be careful when pruning. They also have delicate roots so care when transplanting is key, do not disturb roots too much if possible. Transplanting once established is not recommended.
The beautiful pop of color they give can really add a nice touch to a garden, house, or commercial space. One of the easiest landscape additions to consider especially with all the color choices!
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Southern California has great options when it comes to choosing new plants for landscaped areas and gardens. It's mild climate makes it a perfect home for both native varieties and plants from other similar climates from around the world.
Although there are many choices to choose from, considering ones that are drought resistant when established and non-invasive is a good idea. Whether you are looking for shrubs, succulents, vines, groundcover, grass, perennials, or trees, this list from the San Diego County Water Authority has great water smart options for each: "These plants have been selected because they are attractive, often available in retail nurseries, easy to maintain, long-term performers, scaled for residential landscapes, and of course, once established, drought tolerant."
From commercial to residential, our professionals at Pacific Vista Landscape Services are here to help with all your landscaping needs. If you are starting a new project or redoing an existing landscaped area, contact us and see what we can do for you!
New insight into a plant's respiratory system, responsible for creating it's energy, has been discovered according to elifesciences.org which just recently published these findings in an article called Atomic Structures of Respiratory Complex III2, Complex IV, and Supercomplex III2-IV from Vascular Plants. Research done by the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at University of California Davis in California, has discovered the complex structures of atomic proteins that make up the respiratory system of a plant.
Like many other living creatures, plants use their respiratory system to garner energy. While other organisms' complex respiratory systems have been well studied, the underlying structures of plant's system has been challenging to view, until now.
Plants first use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into sugar, and then use their respiratory system to change the sugar into energy. This happens with the help of mitochondria, the part of the cell that helps turn food into energy, which is involved with five protein assemblies in the plant's respiratory system, creating an electron train to create energy.
Scientists did not know what a plant's respiratory system atomic structure actually looked like until this study, which uncovered three of the five protein assemblies involved. Using mung beans, they extracted mitochondria complexes, washed them with a mild detergent and stabilized them, then used cryo-electron microscopy to reveal their highly detailed 3D structures. The three newly revealed atomic structures are called complex III, complex IV and supercomplex III-IV. Based on the knowledge of these structures, the scientists then created models to test interactions with other molecules, find additional subunits, test binding ability and test the structural flexibility of the assemblies.
"Understanding how plant respiratory complexes work could lead to improvements in crop yields or, since respiration is required for survival, result in the development of herbicides that block respiration in plants more effectively and specifically. Further researching the structure of the plant respiratory complexes and supercomplexes could also shed light on how plants adapt to different environments, including how they change to survive global warming."
Their research also showed that there are shared aspects of respiratory structures between plants, mammals, bacteria, and fungi that previously were thought to exist only in plants. They also found some of the structures were actually unique to plants. This is important because many herbicides and pesticides used in agriculture are made to interfere with the respiratory system of pests and this could help make them more effective and less harmful to crops.
"Our work provides high-resolution structures of plant respiratory complexes that reveal plant-specific features, allowing for the development of more selective inhibitors as herbicides and pesticides," concludes senior author James Letts, Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, UC Davis, US. "Further comparative analyses of these structures with the growing number of respiratory complexes will allow us to understand the fundamental principles of respiration across the tree of life."
Read the full study here:https://elifesciences.org/articles/62047
