Antigua Guatemala's Blog

La Antigua is lush, luxuriously lush. Tropical plants and flowers spill over colorful, colonial walls and crumbling, colonial remnants creating an irresistibly romantic landscape for lovers. (As shown in the photo below… awww.) The most common of these crawler, ivy-like plants spotted in LAG is the Bougainvillea.

Because the old Spanish town is nestled in a valley surrounded by volcanoes in the mountainous highlands of central-south Guatemala, the Bougainvillea thrives in LAG without much care or tending needed. La Antigua is characterized by a cool, tropical climate with temperatures that range between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year. Rain is common enough in these mountainous tropics, but so is a warm, calming sun, which regularly illuminates LAG’s storybook streets and avenues. This creates the ideal environment for the Bougainvillea plant, whose optimal growing temperatures are warm days (70 – 85 F) and cool nights (60 – 70 F).

Bougainvilleas are considered one of the most popular and most widely grown tropical vines. The plant blooms with its own flourish of color – including pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white, or yellow. Thus, it makes the perfect accent to Antigua Guatemala’s rainbow-colored walls, rainbow-colored textiles, rainbow-colored culture.

The French botanist Philibert Commerson first discovered the plant – native to Brazil – in the late 1760s and named it after his captain, Louis A. de Bougainville. Depending on the expert, there are between four and 18 species of the thorny, vining plant and they grow anywhere from one to 12 meters tall.