Bougainvillea pruning

Hello all,
I've come across a few videos in which people remove the flowers and bracts from bougainvillea shortly after they develop. The idea is that this diverts energy from flower production to foliar mass. I just wanted to see if anyone here could validate this (and specifically for bougainvillea)? I can't seem to find a lot of info about it online, at least from a credible source.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to chime in!

Hey!

Well, it's true, and for a lot of species, when you're training a tree, flowers aren't much of an objective, so there's not much of a point to let the flowers on it (unless you want seeds, from some species), so yes, many people do remove flowers to spare the tree's energy for what really matters at the moment (branches, foliage, etc...).

Since the bract is kind of a "modified" leaf, the same goes for it, you remove it and the energy the tree is putting on it, will go elsewhere, like new, vegetative growth.

Oh, I just remembered a cool and practical example of this energy distribution, which is largely used on fruits production, called "fruit thinning", which consists in removing the excess of fruits on a tree, so the tree can focus it's energy on those fruits you left, resulting in bigger fruits.
Which is not exactly the same, but it's the same idea.

Appreciate you answering that so thoroughly, this helps a lot. I'll start putting this into practice and look forward to the tree's response. My tree is in early development and it sounds like this could make a big difference. Thanks Albas!