Jacaranda mimosifolia is a sub-tropical tree native to south-central South America that has been widely planted elsewhere because of its attractive and long-lasting violet-colored flowers. It is also known as the jacaranda, blue jacaranda, Nupur or black poui. Older sources call it J. acutifolia, but modern authorities usually classify it as J. mimosifolia. In scientific usage, the name "jacaranda" refers to the genus Jacaranda, which has many other members, but in horticultural and everyday usage, it nearly always means the blue jacaranda. In its native range in the wild, J. mimosifolia is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN.
Description
The tree grows to a height of up to 20 m (66 ft). Its bark is thin and grey-brown, smooth when the tree is young but eventually becoming finely scaly. The twigs are slender and slightly zigzag; they are a light reddish-brown. The flowers are up to 5 cm (2 in) long, and are grouped in 30 cm (12 in) panicles. They appear in spring and early summer, and last for up to two months. They are followed by woody seed pods, about 5 cm (2 in) in diameter, which contain numerous flat, winged seeds. The blue jacaranda is cultivated for the sake of its large compound leaves, even in areas where it rarely blooms. The leaves are up to 45 cm (18 in) long and bi-pinnately compound, with leaflets little more than 1 cm (0.4 in) long. There is a white form available from nurseries.
The unusually shaped, tough pods, which are 5 to 8 cm (2 to 3 in) across, are often gathered, cleaned, and used to decorate Christmas trees and dried arrangements.
Wood
The wood is pale grey to whitish, straight-grained, relatively soft, and knot-free. It dries without difficulty and is often used in its green or wet state for turnery and bowl carving.
Habitat and range Jacaranda mimosifolia is native to southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, northern Argentina (Salta, Jujuy, Catamarca, and Misiones provinces), and southern Bolivia. It is found in the Dry Chaco and flooded savannas, and in the Southern Andean Yungas of the eastern Andean piedmont and inter-Andean valleys, up to 2600 meters elevation. In its native range, the tree is threatened by uncontrolled logging and clearing of land for agriculture, and is assessed as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. The jacaranda is regarded as an invasive species in parts of South Africa, Namibia, and Queensland, Australia, where it can out-compete native species.
Taxonomy The taxonomic status of the blue jacaranda is unsettled. ITIS regards the older name, J. acutifolia, as a synonym for J. mimosifolia. However, some modern taxonomists maintain the distinction between these two species, regarding them as geographically distinct: J. acutifolia is endemic to Peru, while J. mimosifolia is native to Bolivia and Argentina. If this distinction is made, cultivated forms should be treated as J. mimosifolia, since they are believed to derive from Argentine stock. Other synonyms for the blue jacaranda are J. chelonia and J. ovalifolia. The blue jacaranda belongs to the section Monolobos of the genus Jacaranda.
Ornamental use The blue jacaranda has been cultivated in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost; established trees, however, tolerate brief spells of temperatures down to around −7 °C (19 °F). Even when young trees are damaged by a hard frost and suffer dieback, they will often rebound from the roots and grow in a shrub-like, multi-stemmed form. However, flowering and growth will be stunted if the jacaranda is grown directly on the California coast, where a lack of heat combined with cool ocean winds discourages flowering. This plant has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Cultivation
Jacaranda trees were introduced to South Africa by Baron von Ludwig during the start of the botanical garden in Cape Town around 1829. Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, is popularly known as Jacaranda City because of the large number of trees; It is estimated that Pretoria and surroundings are home to more than 65,000 of them. Jacaranda trees turn the city blue and purple when they flower in spring. The jacaranda trees, far from their native South Central South America (southern Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina, and southern Bolivia), bloom every October. Water scarcity has South Africa trying to eradicate foreign species of plants and trees, including the jacaranda. Acknowledging the tree's popularity with locals, the government announced in the early 2000s that it would not remove the trees, but banned the planting of new ones. By 2016, this decision was reversed, and jacarandas were again allowed to be planted in urban environments in some provinces.
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