GREEN CARDAMOMS/Gaurangi Maitra
CASCADING PANICLES of blue-purple Jacaranda tell me it must be April, early summer. I discovered them from my window, behind the towering silk cotton cascading over red roof tops between tangles of green shrubs and creepers. In both the northern and southern hemispheres, Jacaranda is part of the legend of spring. I want to go to Shillong now to see the waters through the Jacaranda frieze as the highway curves onto the bridge over the Barapani Lake. And I want to be in Perth for the November Jacaranda Festival in quaintly named Applecross village. Above all, I want to be a child again picking up the blossoms from under the trees, blowing into blue floral trumpets on my way to school trying to match birds on its boughs. I want to imagine again that a prince charming will carry his love across the carpet of delphinium blue just like those romantic fables we read under cover and before eighteen. And today, I am in Assam, in the lands of the Brahmaputra, among the people who have drawn the jacaranda into their festival of Rongali Bihu, weaving its mesmerising bounty into song, sentiment and celebration. While in topsy turvy down under an Australian song says, “When the bloom of the Jacaranda is here, Christmas time is near.”
For once the men of science refrained from rechristening the genus after a master or mistress unconnected to the native soil. So Jacaranda remained jacaranda as christened by the Guarani tribe with only the species name acknowledging latter day nomenclature. If one follows the trail of the name/names after the species named Jacaranda mimosifolia D. Don or Jacaranda obtusifolia Humboldt & Bonpl, one learns of intrepid travellers’ tales and their bounties in which the Jacaranda travelled from its home to most parts of the globe. This migrant from the plant kingdom has hitchhiked its way as a souvenir in the bounty of travellers coming back from South America. The Jacaranda is now a global citizen found universally in tropical and sub-tropical countries growing in well drained soil, tolerating drought and surviving short bouts of frost even freezing. Give it a sunny location, sufficient water and it is easily propagated from grafting, cuttings and seeds. And so across the Atlantic, at the southernmost tip of the continent of Africa, masses of blue Jacaranda blossoms give Pretoria a more poetic name Jakarandastaad. I have the picture of an avenue from this blue city on my desktop .It envelops my world in a monsoon deluge of lilac with stately Jacarandas making a roof over my head. The haiku Basho wrote for the cherry blossoms in Japan could as easily be transcreated for blossom drenched jakaranstaads, the world over.
The traditional range of the Guaraní people that extended over parts of Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia was also home to the Jacaranda. So we are told that the Guarani word Jacaranda meant fragrant. Fragrance from the lightly scented blooms and fragrance from the cream- pink toned wood with beautiful streaks. This strong, light and easy to work wood that lends itself to a handsome finish and polish is used in the automotive industry for luxury cars, in Egypt for making beautiful pianos and in Brazil for making acoustic guitars. No wonder then that a legend from Argentina brings us a patriarch among jacaranda trees in Plaza Flores in Buenos Aires which would whistle tango songs when requested. It takes two to tango. May I? (trobairitzg2gmail.com)
(References: Wikipedia, AH Gentry & W Morawetz, Jacaranda, in Gentry, AH 1992; Flora Neotropica: Bignoniaceae – Part II (tribe Tecomeae); Flora Neotropica Monograph 25 (2): 1-130)