Pretoria Transformed into Purple Paradise. Yes, It’s Jacaranda Time!
It’s that time of the year again! Pretoria has turned into Jacaranda City! Although before all the students start stressing, it is a couple of weeks early this year. As most South African students know, the first sight of the purple extravaganza usually means if you haven’t started studying yet, it’s already too late. But with […]
It’s that time of the year again! Pretoria has turned into Jacaranda City! Although before all the students start stressing, it is a couple of weeks early this year.
As most South African students know, the first sight of the purple extravaganza usually means if you haven’t started studying yet, it’s already too late. But with this year’s early blooming, pupils needn’t panic…but do take it as a reminder to start revising ASAP!
CAROL ALLAIS and RIA VILJOEN sent in the beautiful photos on this page of Pretoria’s tree-lined avenues this week…resplendent with carpets of purple petals, with a dash of white. The pretty purple pictures were taken in the streets of Brooklyn and New Muckleneuk, and the rare and wonderful white jacarandas in Herbert Baker Street, Groenkloof.
Ria said: “I am overwhelmed with jacarandas showing off everywhere. I have an arsenal of jacaranda photos as the flowers are an overnight sensational blooming spectacle with each new morning. As the rains have not fallen yet, the flowers are amazing!”
Not all the trees are blooming as magnificently as last year’s incredible display, and those that have been replanted in George Storrar Street from Hatfield are apparently looking “terrible”. Hopefully they will recover.
The jacaranda was first imported from Brazil in about 1829, and is therefore included on the government’s list of banned non-indigenous plants…but because it’s become such a South African ‘treasure’, it has not been forcefully removed like other invasive foreign plants, although it is forbidden to plant new ones.
Former President Nelson Mandela famously said that the moments sitting under the shade of the jacaranda trees in Pretoria were “the most pleasant of the trial”.
Jacarandas can be found around South Africa from Pietermaritzburg and Paarl to Durban, and around the world including the USA, Israel, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Australia and Portugal. But there’s something extra special about the jacaranda trees in Pretoria…
As Mandela said in his inauguration speech in May 1994: “To my compatriots, I have no hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld.”
EXTRA
The following aerial photo of Johannesburg has gone viral this week, credited to the wrong photographer…but it was actually taken in November 2013 by Martin Harvey / Corbis
View more photos of white jacarandas in Pretoria here.