Bougainvilleas

Hi all.
I am from a very dry and warm part from South Africa. We don't really have much variety to choose from growing your own Bonsai. Yamadori hunting is fruitless as most fields are swamped with a type of thornbush. So I have a few air layerings/cuttings of fruit trees I obtained from my yard. Mostly fig, grape, kumquat, mulberry and bougainvillea. Bougainvilleas seem to be doing pretty good in my region. What are your experiences? How many types does one get.

There are so many cultivars of bougainvilleas and they can be propagated easily with cuttings. I think just pick the ones you like and grow them. For me if I see one I like, I just ask the owner for a cutting and grow it.

Well, not all hope is lost. Here in Central Europe they sell indoor bonsai made from Grewia Occidentalis which I believe is home to your part of the world. Fast growing, small leaves, nice flowers, handles big pruning very well, roots very easily... Try looking for some.

Thanks guys. I really appreciate.

There are millions of good bonsai candidates for you there, maybe more!    Natal Plum and Burtt Davii Fig are both native to the dry uplands of the mountain range on the Indian Ocean side.  I have no idea how far that is from you, but any fig variety works well, 'Too Little' and 'Green Island' my favorites, and as above stated, Bougies are wonderful, especially collected.  'Kyoto' Serrisa, Fukien Tea, Bucida Spinosa, Desert Rose, Mesquite, Tamarind, Poincianna, Singapore Holly, Texas Ebony, Brazilian Raintree and probably many other plants common in local landscape nurseries.  Anything you find in a nursery also exists to be collected where they are remodeling businesses, in which case they almost always replace all landscaping plants.  Keep your eyes open driving around the city, and ask the General Contractor if anyone would care if you dig up this or that plant.  Usually they don't mind.  Or, a small bribe for something especially nice.  But, you gotta beat the bulldozers...

One more odd possibility:  Sometimes you'll see some plant in a landscape and you say to yourself, "That plant looks bad there, or is terrible where it is planted" because it is in the wrong place in a landscape, or planted too close to a sidewalk, or door, or otherwise outgrowing where it is, and you think you wouldn't let it be if that was your property.  Eventually, that someone who lives there will rip it out and put it in the trash.  You don't have much to loose by knocking on the door and asking if  they would like you to remove it for free and leave them a nice, clean hole.  You might even offer to replace it with something else you name specifically.  I learned this the hard way, everyday driving past a Wisteria I coveted that was too close to a driveway and elsewhere, an absolutely perfect dwarf Simpaku probably 40 years old planted in a really dumb location in relation to everything else in the yard.  Both of these disappeared one day, and I wanted to cry.  I'm working on my Barber now.  He has an old procumbens juniper sticking out on his sidewalk.  By spring I expect him to be pleased to have me make it disappear.