Magenta blossoms

In "Glorians and such," I quoted as an example of a Glorian "witnessing an ant transporting a magenta blossom across the desert floor." In the next post, "Animals dipped in food," one of the titular animals was a blackbird "in the bush with pink blossoms." One of the definitions of pink is "magenta, the color evoked by red and blue light when combined."

I was on the road in the afternoon and happened to pass a gigantic bougainvillea, climbing all the way to the top of a utility pole, an explosion of magenta blossoms. Or no, I corrected myself, not blossoms. Bracts, which are modified leaves. Though petals are modified leaves, too, so the distinction seems rather academic.

When I arrived home, my wife was out front chatting with our neighbor, who was working in her garden. I went inside first, and when my wife came in, she told me what they had been talking about: whether the colorful structures on a particular plant were flowers (the neighbor's position) or leaves (my wife's). I of course asked what plant they were talking about, thinking it must be either bougainvillea or poinsettia, but she said it was jiuchongge, a name I didn't know. I looked it up and found that it's an alternate term for bougainvillea, which I had previously known only as sanjiaomei.