Monday, May 4, 2009

Jackaranda


Jackaranda sounds so exotic to my Midwest ears. Like something from Out of Africa or a Rudyard Kipling piece. The trees are in bloom here in Arizona right now, and I'm wishing I'd planted one in my front yard instead of whatever it was I chose. The flowers remind me of gigantic wisteria blooms. A woman at the nursery talked me out of a jackaranda because she said they were frost sensitive. These big trees seem to have survived just fine!

7 comments:

jeanie said...

LOL I thought it was going to be a funky animal. Pretty tree though.

Life's a Beach! said...

It does kind of sound like an animal from the Outback! LOL

Ann said...

That's an interesting tree
( bush?) What's the real color of it? I would think most anything would survive in AZ, those I'm sure there are things it's way to warm for.....

Life's a Beach! said...

Ann, I saturated the color up a couple of notches, but the blooms are that deep purple and the greenery is green! And it's a tree. I just caught the top of it. Actually Ann, we do get heavy frosts, especially where we live. Our original landscaping was done in early December, and the next night the deep freeze began. It wiped out the expensive ficus trees, all the pigmy palms, all the hibiscus, etc... Arizona is tricky because if the extreme summer temps don't burn it up, the winter freeze often kills it! We do a lot of replacing.

We also have to overseed new rye grass every fall in order to keep it year round green. Bermuda's the only type that will make it through the extreme heat of summer, and it goes dormant in the winter.

Moongrl722 said...

Pretty!!! I've never seen those before!!

Bennie said...

What a beautiful tree. I was reading your comments here and had no idea you had the heavy frosts in your area.

Life's a Beach! said...

Bennie, the first year we moved here, the Phoenix metro area even got about an inch of snow. Craig worked in Mesa at the time, and he saw kids throwing snowballs on his way to work. This 'winter' was mild. We only covered our plants two or three times and didn't get any frost damage.