Garden Plants - Bougainvillea

This highly exotic plant was named for Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who was hired by Louis XV to circumnavigate the globe and 'claim' any landmasses not otherwise owned, to compensate the French crown for the losses to the British in North America.

Dear old Bougainville, discovering that his friend Commerson had just experienced the loss of his wife in childbirth, invited the botanist to join the expedition in an attempt to shake him free of his despair. It worked.

The bougainvillea originates in South America, but the two friends first saw it in Tahiti, an island famed for its beautiful inhabitants and its free and easy attitudes to love-making. The men were fascinated by the beauty of the plant which has curtains of pink, purple or white bracts which look like flower petals. The flower itself is small and yellow. The Tahitans, in turn, were fascinated by Commerson's pet cat, and offered to swap it for the most beautiful girl on the island. He refused. The sailors thought he was stupid, until one day Commerson's young assistant, Monsieur Baret, was seized by a local chieftain who had worked out what a whole ship of British sailors hadn't - Jean Baret was actually a young woman! There are two versions of the story; in the first Baret admits that she fooled Commerson as well as everybody else and just wanted to have an adventure, in the second it is claimed he helped her maintain her disguise and - of course - had no interest in the young Tahitan maiden because he was already amply provided for. Interestingly, it does seem that when the voyage was over, the young Baret reverted to skirts and became Commerson's housekeeper.

Garden Bougainvillea photograph by David Wilmot, used under a creative commons attribution licence