One of the great joys of being born and bred in Los Angeles is that I’ve built a pretty extensive knowledge base.
I know how long it will take to get from point A to point B in no traffic and Thursday night traffic on Olympic. I know the beach with the best parking, the spots to look at the downtown skyline, the best date night spots, and I know that there are times when I know better than Google Maps (this is rare).
I consider myself lucky to know the city so well, a privilege that only comes with identifying deeply with my childhood freeway exit. I truly love the city and often find myself to be a bit of a propagandist when out-of-state friends come to town. I find myself in Beachwood Canyon, the Eastside, the Westside, Larchmont and Santa Monica.
In areas of the city that I don’t know well (yet), I’m driving like I know exactly how long each stoplight takes. But I always hint, hint, nudge, nudge for friends to come over during Jacaranda season.
Even the most established Angelenos I know cock their heads when I say the name. They know the tree, but not the name when I reference the violet-blue blossoms. They take their phone out of their pocket to look it up. Google shows them photos of streets lined with trees and flowers coating the asphalt.
“J-A-C-A-R-A-N-D-A,” I spell out as I look over their shoulder as they type it into the search bar.
You likely know them, though you can’t remember the name (in fact, I’m not entirely sure where I learned the name of the tree). The tree with the blue and violet flowers tends to bloom in early-to-mid spring.
Though there are different species, the ones you likely see everywhere are “Jacaranda mimosifolia.” You might know them from the blooms dropping onto your car or from the shocks of blue and purple that you find as you drive down a tree-lined street. To me, they’re perhaps one of the city’s most hidden gems, and ironically, they’re everywhere.
The trees also embody so many of the qualities that make up an Angeleno: they’re messy, they’re
beautiful, they’re flashy, they’re not from Los Angeles (they’re actually from South America!), and they thrive in the sunshine of spring. They’re there for a good time, not a long time.
It’s unclear exactly when they arrived here, but what’s known is that they’re beautiful and have been written about in the papers since 1912, using different varieties of “striking” and “messy.” Sound LA enough, yet?
They’re polarizing. Few debates have taken over the city quite like the tree (except perhaps if it’s Phillipe’s or Cole’s who invented the French Dip). An Angeleno either believes that the tree is a pure nuisance or an incredible beauty. Those in the city hate how their car becomes dusted with the flowers, how it smells if you squeeze the blossoms, and how they can get sticky if you step on them as you walk down the street.
They’re all true, but it’s time to shift the perspective.
For me, the jacaranda is something that I set my clock to. I expect the bloom when I see that the flowers of the wisteria have fallen off, and I know that the very next thing to herald summer will not be the students being let out of school, but the jacaranda tree. This tree, as Angeleno as those that could walk around the city blindfolded, is a comforting presence that I can sit below and read whichever trashy book is next on my list.
In Los Angeles, it can seem that the climate is out to get us. We are constantly aware of the threat of the “big one” — the earthquake that is a ticking time bomb of destruction, the rhythm of fire season, the searing heat of late summer, and how torrential downpours in February seem interminable in recent years.
The “wild, wild west” seems truly wild and unsteady. Everything seems a little fragile; everyone seems a little on edge. Instead of being angry about the innocuous downpour of jacaranda blooms onto our much-treasured cars and sidewalks, we should instead enjoy the beauty that they bring. We should enjoy how it seems like the city’s little secret.
They’re not particularly well known beyond the confines of Southern California (or their homeland of South America), but they are an incredibly welcome sight in the springtime. I look forward to the time when they are put in the same standing as Washington D.C. ‘s cherry blossoms.
As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I knew that I could time the end of the school year to the tree. It was a rhythm that I was familiar with, and when I graduated from college (from a school in the city), I knew that those exact same trees could end up in the backdrop of the celebratory photos.
Beyond using them to tell the timing of the season, Angelenos ought to embrace the beautiful nuisance of the tree and view it as a celebration
of the city.
After all, we could be dealing with snow.