Rhapsody in Blue: Everything they say about the jacaranda is true. It’s a terrific tree. But Mexico City needs more trees. And it needs to take better care of the ones it has.

 

Everyone loves Mexico City’s jacarandas . . . for a while.  

    For a few months, beginning right about now, their blue-purple display re-asserts their niche in urban lore and landscape. The showiness reminds us of their role as a harbinger of spring. It’s been an inspiration for authors from Barbara Kingsolver to Elena Poniatowska, and a handy lead for bloggers and travel hacks who can riff off “When the jacarandas are in bloom in Mexico City …”
  
    And then, for the rest of the year, though no less noble, they’re forgotten. 
  
    But for those eight flowering weeks … ahh. When the jacarandas are in bloom in Mexico City — see how tempting that is? — there is beauty at hand. You don’t have to go looking for it, as is usually the case here. The trees seem to be everywhere. There’s color all around and a perceptible uptick in the municipal mood.
    Or maybe not. But the trees are magnificent.
  
    A few years ago, I took a micro north to Parque Xochitla in Tepozotlán to talk to Lorena Martínez, a biologist and tree advocate, about jacarandas. Xochitla is one of the few parques ecológicos that really are ecological parks, not just a few acres of open space with fewer than the usual number of soccer fields. Martínez runs the botanical garden there, and is in charge of urban green space education.    
  
    “The jacaranda is one of the few trees in the Valley of Mexico that are appreciated,” she observed. “People know its name, which is a major victory right there. Most trees have no individual identity in the public eye.”



GENEROSITY
Nor does the public eye often track a tree's seasonal changes. The jacaranda is virtually bare just before flowering. Before that, it’s as thick with green foliage as any other tree. It’s verdure is unique, though, thanks to leaves that are both pinnate and compound, meaning they are feathery and with doubled-up leaflet patterns. 
  
    Martínez ran down for me some of the jacaranda’s virtues. Its wood is attractive, useful for carpentry though not highly commercial.  And it smells good. Its seed-bearing fruits are out-of-this-world – hard, brown, castanet-shaped objects that tend to inspire amateur arts and crafts projects. The tree’s shape is elegant, with trunks and branches much bolder than its flowery reputation would suggest.    
  
    Jacarandas also give the city all the benefits that most of the too-few trees offer: oxygenation; moisture retention; climate control to offset the countless concrete-generated “thermal islands” that can raise the temperature as much as 5 degrees centigrade; energy-saving shade around homes that would otherwise use more air conditioning; noise buffering; a sense of comfort; and blessed stress relief, among much else.
  
    “It’s a very generous tree,” says Martínez. “And not just for the flowers.”



LIGHT AND GRACE

But let’s face it, the flowers are the reason most people pay attention to the jacaranda. What makes its bloom so vivid?
  
     One reason, Martínez suggests, is enhanced perception, the result of  timing. The jacarandas in Mexico City and the surrounding urban area bloom earlier than in, say, California. The flowers start appearing in February, flourish in March and continue into early April. They anticipate spring more than they actually usher it in. 
  
    So hued tree-wise, they’re virtually the only show in town. The colorín (Erythrina americana), a Mexican native, is probably the only worthy competitor in Mexico City’s temperate climate; its bloom season starts a tad later, but overlaps with the jacaranda’s.  
  
    The colorín’s tubed flowers are a striking bright scarlet and appear in clusters on a spike. In both trees, the flowers grow on an otherwise naked structure; the leaves come later in an energy-saving sequence. 
  
    The difference between the two is that the colorín’s crimson clusters occur sparsely, while the jacaranda is overrun with blue or purple; 40 to 100 flowers occupy the ends of almost every branch. At the height of the blooming season the Mexico City jacarandas look for all the world like trees in full, rich foliage — but in blue rather than green, and with flowers rather than leaves. 
  
    Colorful flowers attract pollinators. The jacaranda flowers are more noticeable than most partly because of their abundance, But also because of their structure. They’re very small, very thin and very trumpet-shaped. The five lobes that make up each flower vary in size, but none are more than five centimeters long. If you look closely, you’ll see hints of white amid the blue.
  
    All of those characteristics add to the luminous effect. Those little blue flowers are lean, mean light-reflecting machines. Or as Martínez puts it more pleasingly, “They reflect the light with grace. It’s a marvelous thing.”
  
    For a few months, that is. When the bloom falls, so does public attention. The non-flowering jacaranda (which is what a jacaranda is most of the time) is no different than its fellow city-dwelling trees – a  victim of neglect, poor care, abuse and the scorn of homeowners, whose DNA mandates a fierce suspicion of anything with roots.
  
    We’ll take a look at that particular state of affairs later this week.