The Story of Mexico's Jacaranda Trees
This year the jacaranda trees (ha-cah-RAHN-dah) began to bloom early, their violet colored blossoms gradually emerging. It happened subtly, in the way light begins to illuminate the day before the rising sun has actually broken the horizon. At first there’s just a blush of color and then, suddenly, it’s everywhere.
Oaxaca doesn’t have a spring in the way other, colder places do, because Oaxaca doesn’t have a winter in the way other places do. This year our coldest night was around 39 degrees. For the first time in my life I didn’t experience the smell of damp, raw earth that spring brings. I didn’t see the snow melt, the early spring blossoms emerge from the frozen ground in Manhattan’s Central Park. I didn’t experience the days grow gradually warmer as long dormant trees and bushes begin to show the first signs of tender, green growth. Instead we have the jacarandas, which gradually and magnificently begin to blossom as the hottest days of the year arrive.
It’s been hot and dry, and this year the blossoms were early, which the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) says is tied to climate change. The flowers particularly captivated Andrea’s aunt Ursula, who at the time was visiting us, but all three of us were unprepared for the spectacular beauty. The view from my office displays a small slice of our village and every day it seems another tree has erupted into violet beauty. But where did the trees come from, and why are there so many of them?
According to The New York Times, the beautifully hued jacaranda trees arrived in Mexico City in the 1930s at the request of then-president Pascual Ortiz Rubio. Rubio had visited Washington D.C. and seen the city’s cherry trees and was so impressed by their beauty he wanted to replicate that experience in his own capital city. Sadly, for cherry blossoms to develop they require lower temperatures than the climate of Mexico City could offer. But when Rubio consulted with Tatsugoro Matsumoto, a Japanese immigrant who was the gardener for the then-presidential palace at Chapultepec Park, he recommended the jacaranda, a variety of tree he had helped bring to the city during previous years. There’s a lot more to this story and I could recap their article here in more detail, but really you’re better off reading their original reporting in full.
Jacaranda mimosifolia is a tree native to South America, and it requires a sub-tropical climate. The blossoms are long-lasting (up to two months!) which makes the trees particularly worthy of planting for decorative reasons.
Jacarandas are deciduous, the family of trees which also includes oak, maple, birch, elm, and beech. Deciduous trees drop their leaves during part of the year and it is the jacaranda’s periodic lack of foliage that leads to one of its most breathtaking features. When jacaranda blossoms magnificently start to appear the trees are almost completely bare, and the flowers are much more numerous than the tree’s leaves. The trees’ branches seem almost completely purple as a result, making them look almost Dr. Seuss-ian, more fantastical than real.
Jacarandas are not Mexico’s national tree: that privilege belongs to the Montezuma Cyprus, the variety of tree for which Santa Maria del Tule is so famed. But jacarandas are so beloved you could be forgiven if you assumed they were the country’s official tree.
The New York Times quoted Francisco Arjona, an environmental engineer who gives tours of trees around Mexico City. His Instagram account says sections of CDMX (Ciudad de México) which contain jacarandas include Narvarte, Condesa, Ciudad Universitaria, Alameda Central, and Chapultepec, all areas his tours cover. But here in Oaxaca, despite the fact that it’s generally incredibly dry, we see the trees virtually everywhere we look. There are thousands of them and they’re planted in people’s yards, within the city center, and on the sides of roads. I can’t quite figure out how widespread they are across other parts of Mexico, though. Most of the reputable, reported stories I’ve found are focused on Mexico City and the legitimate, referenced botanical information I’ve located focuses on the characteristics of the trees and not where they grow in Mexico. But if the climate where we are—hot, dry, and high altitude—can support these trees, I imagine they also must be growing in other parts of Mexico as well.
Incredibly, the blossoms are supposed to last for up to two months, so we can expect to see their beauty for far longer than I expected. But it’s already becoming common to see blossoms scattered on the ground, leaving a trail of vibrant purple wherever the wind blows.
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