Flowers in Australia: 21

Jacaranda Tree

Australian streets are awash with the magnificent purple-blue blooms of jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia) in late spring and early summer. As well as being superb street trees, jacarandas look stunning on their own as a specimen tree in an open lawn, where their fallen flowers form a colourful carpet of blue.

Lots of people think jacarandas are natives, but they’re not. They are native to Brazil, where they are deciduous, not because of cold winters, but because of the monsoonal wet and dry seasons. They briefly drop their leaves at the end of the dry season.

Jacaranda blossom

Jacaranda

In Sydney throughout the months of October and November the Jacaranda Trees come to life, filling the city and surrounding suburbs with stunning and calming purple/blue flowers.  Some of the best places in the city to see the trees are The Rocks, Royal Botanic Gardens and Paddington.

This may be the final Australian flower post for a while. More may occur once I am back in the U K and staying indoors because of the cold- perish the thought! But, wifi and internet connection willing, I hope to post some of the flora found in New Zealand over the next couple of weeks. No doubt a tree fern will focus among them 🙂

Thanks to all my Aussie pals and others who have helped me in identifying some of the flora that I haven’t – there may still be some to ID so if you have time to browse through the Australian flora I have posted, your help is still required on any image without a name!