Bougainvillea glabra

Paper flower is a spiny, evergreen plant, varying in habit from a shrub to a tree, or becoming a climbing shrub producing stems up to 7 meters or more long. When in a more tree form it has a very dense ellipsoid crown.
BARK: twisted, thin stem with sharp thorns.
LEAVES: dark green, alternate, simple, oval, 4-13cm long and 2-6cm broad, sparse and uninteresting, but they have decorative papery bracts surrounding small cream-white coloured flowers.
FLOWERS: tiny white, magenta, purple, red, orange, pink, yellow, violet, usually appear in clusters surrounded by colorful papery bracts. The bracts appear in clusters of 10 to 20. Purple or magenta bracts are produced in late summer and fall and the varieties include other colors.
FRUITS: brown, small, dry, five-ribbed and has one seed.

An Ornamental tree.
Can be planted as a bonsai tree.
The wood can be used for rural constructions.
The wood can be used for fuel.
Medicine: leaves. http://tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php id=Bougainvillea+glabra
Agroforestry: can be grown as a formal hedge, or allowed to spread over the ground as a ground cover, can be grown as living fences, can be used as a pioneer species when restoring native woodland, used to mark out land boundaries.

Paper Flower is native to Brazil growing in well drained sandy desert soils, slopes, mesas and disturbed rocky soil in a broad elevation range, anywhere from sea level to 750m (0-2500 feet). Its natural habitat is equatorial where day and night lengths are almost equal. In these areas, paper flower tends to bloom year round. Elsewhere, best blooming occurs when the night length and day length are almost equal (in spring or fall).The plant can support itself on other plants by means of thorns carried in the leaf axils, though in cultivation it might need tying in to pergolas etc.

Very fast-growing plant. Requires pruning and trimming.