After spring-pruning my bougies, some are flowering from *every* node - doesn't flowering = termination of future vegetation of that node?

I was under the impression (this was told to me by people who I fully expect know what they're talking about) that, on specimen where flowering is 'terminal' ie starting at fresh branch-tips and going backward, that once a node has become a flowering-node, it cannot revert to vegetative; that, for that branche's future thickening, the next-down node that's not flowering becomes the branch's new leader and goes forward from there.

My problem is that, about a month ago after doing a garden-wide spring hard-prune, to 2 nodes on many shoots, I'm now getting flowering at *every* node on many specimen! If flowering means that node can't go vegetative again, what on earth becomes of the tree? Will I need to grow-out new branches from buds that'd surely end up surfacing at the branch-collars?

Thanks for any thoughts on this one, have come to this board via google searches (as well as ausbonsai) a lot and have been very impressed, I've only been practicing a year and a half but am learning & doing as much as I can and am happy to have finally signed-up here but I've been posting to bonsainut and reddit for the past year as SU2 and Neovngr, respectively, if anyone here posts on those boards as well

What's a bougie?

Sorry - I just worked it out - Derrrrrrrr!

Haha no worries Bougainvilleas make up the majority of my collection and they're all either collected or propagated, so am just trying to push vegetative growth to develop my basic branching structure but these things just want to flower all the time, am trying to learn anything I can to get them to flower less / grow more!!

(FWIW I'm already doing the obvious stuff like not letting them get too dry, keeping them w/ higher nitro / lower phosphorous, etc etc)

If anyone's got experience on this I'd love to know what you'd do if you're just going for vegetative growth/development, and your specimen starts putting out flowers - do you hard-prune or do you just remove flowers as they occur?

Interesting question!
Have nothing to contribute, though.
But I would like to read replies to your question.

Here's a current album, chronological and curated, of this bougie from acquisition to today: my tree's album

So here in FL, US it's mid-spring and >80 daily, rainy-season is starting... anyways a few months ago I hard-pruned most of my collection (the majority are bougies) back to 2 nodes / branch, as most of my collection is still stock that's only got a round or few rounds of cut-backs/ramification.

I'm unsure what to do now, its growth has halted and I suspect it will flower soon (am surprised it hasn't started setting flower buds to be honest), my usual knee-jerk reaction would be to 'instigate growth' usually by pruning-back a branch to the next-lowest leader-shoot on the branch, or to defoliate it - am still unsure if this helps push growth more than it pushes flowering, am only sure that pinching tips promotes flowering like crazy and is the worst thing I can do!

So can/should I do anything to instigate growth, outside of my normal husbandry stuff (have it on pretty high nitro / low phos fert schedule now w/ a good deal of Mg+/Fe/Su and a micro's-mix), or should I simply let it sit there, wait til it eventually flowers and then remove them and wait for vegetative growth to resume on its own?

(for anyone who doesn't grow bougies I fear I'm coming across anal about 'fighting the flowers' but the reality is these things put out *lots* of flowers, for a long time, and when you've got a collection that's mostly bougies that are still stock/barely 'pre-bonsai', well, flowering is the antithesis of what I'm going for, and left to their own devices they'll just sit in flower forever so it's not like most flowering trees! Actually it's not even a tree, it's a 'bonsai bush' lol ;D )

my nellie wrote:Interesting question!
Have nothing to contribute, though.
But I would like to read replies to your question.

For what it's worth, the answer ended up being that you just let it try to flower and, as quickly as it's developing flowers, you remove them - that's the best I've gotten, but it was illustrated to me (with pics) that flowering-tips will continue extension after flowering has ceased, those same people suggested their removal if trying to speed it up and I've been doing that for almost a month now and it seems to work just fine I had a branch grow 25% (20" to 25") in 5 days (one inch a day ) that would've been flowering but I was just removing them as it grew, I've stopped measuring since it proved to work and am now just letting the flowers develop just enough to where the 3 individual bract-sets are visibly distinguishable, and I clip it off. Things do seem to slow a bit but that's expected in this type of case, a bit of slowness is fine compared to the full stall that'd occur during a flowering phase, losing >1 month of your growing-season!

I wish mine would bloom... I have been doing all I can and they have only bloomed once in the last 4 years.

tozankyaku wrote:I wish mine would bloom... I have been doing all I can and they have only bloomed once in the last 4 years.

I don't think I've ever heard someone say their bougie doesn't bloom! Things that can help force blooms:

- keeping it on the drier side

- pinching/pruning

- defoliation

- cut-off the nitrogen & increase phosphorous feeding

- wiring (via 'gravitropism', IE if you bend a branch below horizontal it'll usually flower - this seems to work on hibiscus too, though I've never seen it do anything unique to a crape although those are usually *just* shy of being downward, I usually wire first primaries on crapes at an almost-perfect horizontal)

Can you take a pic of your bougie so I can see the setup? How much sun does it get? I should've put 'sun' in the list above, as intense sun is pretty important to good bougie development and you're in zone 7 so it could be an issue of insufficient sun, hopefully they do get 100% full-sun if they're in a zone-7 location! How's the growth-rate, like do they just grow like weeds or are they a bit slow?

Yes I have tried all of that so far. It has been more than two years since this bloom. I did two defoliation this year to work on getting smaller leaves.