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Jacaranda mimosifolia

Jacaranda

Jacaranda, blue jacaranda, black poui, fern tree (Eng); jacaranda, jacarandá, palisandro, tarco (Spa); xicranda (Cat).

Non-Native

“To the east and west/it rains and will rain/one and yet another celestial flower/of jacaranda”

‘La canción del jacarandá’ (The Song of Jacaranda), María Elena Walsh

DESCRIPTION

Tree of average size, 12-15 m in height and with a wide, sometimes parasol-shaped crown, reminiscent of mimosas, particularly due to its feathery foliage. This species typically has a curved trunk with smooth bark that becomes very rough and cracked in older specimens. The leaves are deciduous, opposite and compound. They are large, between 30 and 50 cm in length, and bipinnate. This makes it easy to confuse the complete leaves with the linear-lanceolate or ovate leaflets that are a little more than 1 cm long, have an entire margin and terminate in a point. The showy flowers are also large, around 3-5 cm in length. They are silky-looking, have a violet blue colour, and are shaped like narrow 5-lobed bells. The tree blooms at the end of spring, producing very numerous clusters of flowers that can appear even before the leaves. The fruits, which remain for some time on the tree, are reminiscent of castanets. They are woody, rounded, laterally-flattened capsules about 6 cm in diameter, and they sometimes have wavy margins. When ripe the two sides, or valves, split open releasing a large number of small, flattened, heart-shaped seeds that are coffee-coloured and have a membranous wing.

ECOLOGY

Relatively fast-growing tree, that can withstand both cold snaps and heat waves, and which blooms abundantly if grown in a sunny spot. Very widely used as an ornamental, either as solitary specimens or in groups. It is perfectly adapted to the climate of the Canary Islands, with its occasional thermal extremes, and it can be found growing from sea level up to altitudes of 1000 ms.

DISTRIBUTION

This species is native to South America (Argentina and Bolivia), where it is catalogued as 'vulnerable' according to the IUCN Red List. The jacaranda is also an ornamental tree par excellence in the Canaries, and adorns many towns and cities in the archipelago. It has only been observed established in the wild on the island of Tenerife.