Nikki, I don't have any room to talk! As a result, I have found that Bougainvillea is incredibly forgiving. To restore it, keep it with your orchids, and water it a little more often. If those rocks are the ones that are glued on--they often are in the box stores--remove them, too. The glue is toxic to the plant, and you can always apply loose ones, later. Once it has lots of new growth, give it more sun than your orchids to encourage bloom. Good luck! : ])

It feels like little strands of brown stuff. Not hard, not soft, just... weird. I wasn't sure what it was, and since the plants were relatively small and inexpensive, I pulled them out and quarantined them in a bucket. (Except the Bougainvillea, I just cut off the affected branch, which was fortunately far away from the others). The stuff was just spreading so FAST, my plants didn't look like they were planning on surviving it. Is there a way to make it go away and not come back? There is still a bit of it on the soil around where the plants were. Any idea how I ended up with it? Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone- thanks for the help and suggestions! I have a few cuttings at my parent's house stateside that looked totally dead. They haven't done anything in the last 2 months. I took a tiny blade to make a small slice in the bark (I read somewhere that if it's still green under the bark it's still alive) and sure enough, a few are still alive! I'm not sure that means they'll stay alive, especially since I cut into their bark. :( I am not quite sure how to tell when parts of the mother plant are semi-mature but I think I did come across that once in my searching. I am going to take a few more cuttings (if there are only good ones left!) in about a month so fingers crossed, I can make them grow. If not, I think I'm taking Ken's advice and buying some stateside. Thanks again everyone!

Something is eating my bougainvillea also; so this morning I called a nursery who said he had received lots of similar calls from people whose bushes had similar symptoms. Part of a leaf gets papery thin and loses color. Another leaf has jagged holes in the leaf and sometimes a semi-circle eaten-from-the-edge hole. Sometimes the whole branch shrivels up and dies. And sometimes the leaves fall off, but the branch puts out new growth, which is later eaten. This cycle has repeated itself for 2 years. The nursery guy says it's caterpillars who feed at night and he gave me the name of several insecticides. 1. Monterey BT 2. Spinosad 3. Malathion Close inspection shows a small piece of web, and perhaps an egg. I'll be out tonight with a flashlight looking for caterpillars, meanwhile a friend is coming over with a sprayer and Malathion in a few days. Stay tuned. from PoorMimi