Bougainvillea with wilted leaves

This poor unfortunate spent 3-4 days in my garage when I had to take tender plants in for freezing weather. When I took it out, the leaves were wilted like this. I've given it several opportunities for plenty of water, so that's not the cause.The other 2 bougainvilleas right next to it weren't affected. I can see that new leaves are starting to grow, but the existing leaves won't either recover or fall off, and it's been weeks now. I'm in Mobile Alabama.

Can't think of anything else relevant. If anyone can shed some light on this, that'd be great!

Thanks,
Wyfe_of_Ent

How cold did it get in your garage? It could be if it was borderline cold enough to do damage that this one may have been a little more exposed to wherever the cold air was sneaking in so it suffered a bit and the others didn't. I'd definitely be careful on the watering though, bougies don't need a lot of water even in the summer when it's hot and they're actively growing so a lot of water now when it's cold is not going to be good for them and is going to make its condition worse not better. Either way if the leaves are truly dead the plant will figure that out eventually and drop them, but I've found with other plants that cold-damaged leaves will often hang on for quite a while (I think it may be a defense mechanism on the part of the plant--the dead/damaged leaves help to provide some protection to the rest of the plant if there's another cold snap so it's in the plant's best interest to keep those leaves there)

After spending the whole Spring and Summer worrying about my bougies (this is my first year), I have found that they are much more hardy than I expected. I had them without water inside during Gustav and Ike and thought they were dead because all the leaves fell off. Not so. They started putting out new leaves in about a week or two. Right now they are in a little Visqueen "greenhouse" I had made by putting Visqueen around 4 of the tall pillars of my house. Believe it or not, they are blooming like crazy and I water them very lightlyevery 2 weeks now. Of course, the Visqueen is clear and they get morning and afternoon sun, but I spent so much time worrying about what I was doing wrong during the summer. Now I see that they do pretty good if I leave them alone a little bit.

I'm right outside New Orleans, so I probably have the same climate you do. Some days it's freezing and the next day its 70 degrees. Good lucki. ecrane helped me through my trauma with my bougies when I first got them.

kaye c