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Blown away by purple's majesty

By SUE CARLTON
Published April 30, 2007

I'm driving through a construction-choked intersection, a wall of dust, noise and ugly concrete. I head under an overpass and suddenly there it is, in front of an old bungalow, stretching to the sky in all its purple glory.

The jacarandas are officially back.

If you've lived here for any length of time, you know what this means. Let Washington, D.C., have its show-offy cherry blossoms, Capistrano its yearly return of swallows. For a few weeks each year, we have our jacaranda trees, exploding in great clouds of neon-purple blooms, letting us know our mild winter has become our mild spring.

Except for last year, when they didn't.

Sure, jacarandas bloomed back then. They just didn't give us nearly the spectacular show that they had in years past.

That landscape of green dotted with purple treetops you could spot from the interstate, the sudden sight of a tree so remarkable you did a double take - they just weren't there as much in 2006.

Tree experts explained it this way: We had been through a drought. Trees, industrious things that they are, can minimize or even give up flowering and fruiting in order to conserve their energy.

Plus, nature likes to go in cycles, more one year, less another. Think bumper crops.

I learned a lot about jacarandas: how they came from South America but are considered noninvasive exotics. How lots of them were planted around the city of St. Petersburg in the 1960s. How, like some of our residents, they can be brittle and unable to take a hard freeze. How they are both revered (by those of us who find them breathtaking) and reviled (by others who are not amused by those messy carpets of blossoms strewn across rooftops, sidewalks, cars and porch steps waiting to be cleaned up).

Alan Mayberry, arborist for the city of Dunedin and formerly urban forestry manager in Clearwater, shares my enthusiasm. He says jacarandas are one of his favorite exotic trees. (Serious tree guys like him apparently have lots of favorites.)

"I love the look. I can't imagine anyone not liking them - they're beautiful to behold, " he says. "This year, we're blessed."

Year to year, some things don't change. We will worry about the state of the world; we will watch our legislators toss around ideas from sensible to scary to silly (though the one requiring lawmakers to tell the truth didn't sound half bad).

Stories of tragedy will keep coming: a promising kid, killed for no reason that could make any sense, with a too-available gun.

And sure as tax time, hurricane season will arrive.

Which gave me a theory. I call Hillsborough emergency management director (and go-to hurricane guy) Larry Gispert to test it out.

Last year, not so much in the way of jacarandas, not so much in the way of hurricanes. This year, the jacarandas look to be back in a big way. So...

No correlation, he says. Actually, it doesn't matter if they're predicting a much busier year for us to worry about when hurricane season arrives in June.

"Be ready, because it only takes one, " Gispert says.

Sigh. Enjoy those purple flowers while you can.

[Last modified April 30, 2007, 01:49:02]