A campaign to bring the Olympics back to Los Angeles for a third time fell to defeat Thursday when national officials selected Boston to be the nation’s sole bidder for the 2024 Summer Games.

The Massachusetts capital city prevailed after a two-year competition that saw each candidate submit detailed proposals to the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“We want to think about this as America’s bid,” USOC chairman Larry Probst said recently. “Hopefully we can energize the country and get the country to engaged with the Olympic movement.”

“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”

Boston officials promoted the idea of a “walkable” Games that would turn the city itself into an Olympic village. Numerous universities and colleges in the area could hold events at their existing facilities.

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