The Big Freeze last winter. Whack them back to the ground, they will regrow. Mine always does, it's the whacking job that is most difficult. You need a suit of armor.

I'd thank my lucky stars they're not "flowering" although that's not technically flowers it's just colored leaves. but when they're doing their thing, they can get insanely messy. My neighbor has a bunch of them and even neighbors 3 houses down are mad about it because of all the pink papery things that the wind blows all over our yards and into our pools.

Agreed--the freeze this past winter torched many of the bougies in the area, and young ones have been hit the worst, especially if they were recently planted. Like the other said, just whack it down just above the level of some nice vigorous green shoots and it'll bounce back. You'll get tons of growth and blooms in no time (greendesert is right of course, the colored parts are bracts or modified leaves, the true flowers are the small white tubular mini-flowers in the center of the bracts).

I have a ton of long spined cactus in my garden so I don't have any bougies (I get enough bracts impaled on my cacti from the neighbor's plants, LOL). Good luck with yours, let us know what you do and how it works out!

Take care,
Grant

Thanks kids for the quick response! I thought the freeze might have something to do with it. Will start pruning. Didn't mean to bring out the "bougie rage." hahaha

How do I get rid of mine? It's in a bad spot. I pulled it out after the freeze and of course, it grew right back.it gets very few flowers because it's in the shade and it's in a walkway where I can't keep it trimmed balk enough.

Dig. Dig. Dig.....or Round-Up. Or both. We battled an over abundance of cat claw that even Round-Up would not kill. We dug wayyyyy down in the root zone, butchered the roots into submission to pull out most of the shrub, then covered the resulting hole with lots of dirt. Placed a light barrier.....some dead wood, plywood piece...and I think we've licked those monsters.

Good luck.

I'm trying to get rid of ugly cats claw, too. It doesn't bloom in the shade, I've pulled it a bunch of times and it just keeps coming back. Somebody planted the stuff long before I lived here.