You're dreaming. I havent heard of them without thorns unfortunately. I like them, but their thorns are just too vicious for me.

B

Mistymorn,

The blurb on B.bambino is just another piece of creative BS to get people to buy it. Mine has thorns about 60mm long and the shoots get about 3 metres long. I sprayed 3 of mine only this morning with Roundup and the other 3 with Dicamba to see which ones goes roots up first.

Doug.

A few years ago I purchased a "Klong fire" dwarf semi-thornless boug. and have kept it in a terracotta pot since. Still compact and not too thorny. BUT.... I took cuttings of it the first year, and since planted them out in the garden. A triffid ! many meters high, 5cm trunk, and plenty of thorns. Would I be justified in thinking that these dwarf varieties are treated with growth suppressing hormones or chemicals, which do not necessarily carry across to cuttings struck from the original ? It is quite a mystery. Anybody have an alternative explanation ? Thankfully the "flowers" on this variety are magnificent.
Thanks,
GeoOscar

Doug
Maybe you should have planted your B Bambino in pots and hanging baskets like I did.

A wonderful mass of flowers at present and very tiny thorns.

And as to those huge ones planted in the garden I have fifteen now, and prune them often and are rewarded with the most colourful displays of flowers at different times of the year.

And thorns "" what thorns"" mine are that busy making flowers they have not got the time to grow thorns

MM

Well, I do regular "rounds" of my garden, check what is going on, I do not call it gardenning, just checking on my 'babies'. I pull an occasional weed out and if I happen to see a big straight branch growning on my boug. I just cut it off when it is still soft and the thorns do no harm. But yes, I noticed the same thing, planted out the seem to 'run away'. Next year I am planning to cut my sprinkler hose off in the area where they are growing, hopefully this will produce more flowers and less growth. On the side of my house I like it being thorny, very thorny, it is the best safety fence I can think off, I convinced my neighbour to plant another one on the other side, so soon I will be protected from both sides :-).

There was an article about them on GA last night. They said that if they dry out to the extent that the newly forming 'flowers' drop off, a thorn will grow in its place.

One of these days when I have nothing else to do I may trial this to see if there is any truth in it.

Pam, I understood that if they get too much water than the flowers drop off not when they dry out. I think tommorow, Sunday 1pm, is a repeat so we can check it out.

meggs, please do and let me know - I really only caught the tail end of the segment, and will be away from home today.

Yep, it was when you overwater when they loose their flower buds. You need to keep them dry this is when they 'think' they are dying and they want to produce babies pretty quickly to pass their genes to the next generation. I have two bambinos, one is growing on the north facing wall under eves, gets only some drips from our hot water system and is flowering its head off, the other is in a bed with other plants and gets watered with the rest, does not go rampant, but little flowers. I bought four more and these will go on a very sunny bank, I will cut the irrigation pipe so they will not get water, we will see what happens.

My Black Magic (and others I have seen in gardens, pots) no longer has large leaves. They seemed to shrink in size progressively until they are now only half-palm size. I deliberately haven't fed mine to see what happened so I expected some loss of size but can they only retain their large "purchase" size with loads of feeding?

There is a grower in South Florida that sells 2 varieties (white and purple/lilac). The site is www.bougainvilleas.com. I haven't seen one, but I'm tempted to buy just to check it out. Hope this helps.

I am a commercital grower of bougies & i have atotally thornless bougie it is a Lavender colour & is available for sale.

I am trying to find some thornless bougies. I know they exist, and I don't mean the dwarf ones either. Does anyone know where they can be found in Central Florida?

Hawaiian Bougainvilles are thornless and just the same beautiful colors .. I've had major problems with thorns from other Bougainvilles ...so found these. I'm in Florida so they are available !!

I'm in Florida too, so whee did you find them?

I saw one in Wellington on a garden tour. You could call the Wellington Garden Club for more information.

Here is another Photo of it on the Wellington Garden Tour, Wellington, Florida.

Thornless bougies DO exist! I have two of them. Total fluke.. found by accident shopping near homestead, florida. They had 2 left and i took em. She tells me they sell out very fast.

I am sure that they could be ordered from a good nursery.

Yes there are bougainvilleas without thorns. The gold rush has no thorns or the glow torn is beautiful no thorns

My thorn less Bouganvillea Bambino has developed a branch that has thorns should I cut it off