Grafton News
Jacaranda about to bloom

Jacaranda about to bloom
By Tim Howard
Graftonians have a saying to describe the swift passage of the second half of the year: July Carnival, Jacaranda, Christmas.
And in the time it takes a purple blossom to drop, the second of those is almost upon us.
Officially the Jacaranda Festival dates are October 28 to November 6, but there are far too many opportunities available to fit them all in that time.
Already – as a tribute to the memory of Queen Elizabeth – the purple Jacaranda Crown lights up the Clocktower in Prince St, a month ahead of schedule.
And at the weekend Westlawn residents enjoyed the performances at Jacarok booming out at the race track.
On Saturday many will be frocked and suited up for the Jacaranda Ball at the Grafton PCYC.
Popular covers group The McKenzie Big Band have been booked for the evening and Erin Brown from Vines@39 is catering.
Tickets at $120 a head, which include a complimentary welcome drink canapés, main meal and dessert, are still available and can be bought online on the www.jacarandafestival.com webpage. As a bonus, every sixth ticket in a group booking entitles the table to a bottle of bubbles to share. The fun kicks off at 6pm.
Fans of the purple flower are in for a treat next week when See Park lights up at night, revealing the spectacular night time show the trees put on.
Clarence Valley Council shone lights on the trees for the first time last Jacaranda and it was one of the highlights of the festival.
The lights will stay on until November 10, but for the first three evenings there will be entertainment and food trucks at the park.
And keep your camera and phone handy for a chance to take part in the Bendigo Banks Snap Shire Win competition.
For the duration of the festival if you take a picture you think captures the spirit of Jacaranda, post in online and tag it @GraftonJacarandaFestival and @BendigoBank for a chance to win.
Another unofficial event of Jacaranda is spotting the first blooms.
Unsurprisingly as climate change takes effect the blooms have come earlier each year, although not always in the same fashion.
A traditional early bird has been the tree opposite the Pound St entrance to the Food Emporium, which beats the rest of the city’s trees by around a week in getting a fell head of blooms.
Arborists say it’s likely it benefits from the reflection from both the Emporium and the big windows of the Grafton Library.
Although it again bloomed earlier than most this year, sharp-eyed observers spotted another phenomenon, small individual sprays of jacarandas blooming well ahead of the the rest of the tree.
Some were spotted in the first week of September and were only confined to one or two branches.
The early blooming jacaranda has not been confined to Grafton.
Scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, decided this phenomenon, known as phenological shift, deserved more investigation.
In September each year, South Africa’s Gauteng province turns purple.
The cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria are well covered with trees – and jacarandas are a prominent part of this urban forest.
Elderly residents who have lived in Gauteng their whole life remember jacarandas did not always flower in September.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the trees only started to bloom in mid-November.
Gradually over the decades, the date of bloom has advanced through October to the early weeks of September.
One of the investigators, Jennifer Fitchett, wrote of their findings last year.
“We mined these sources to compile a list of flowering dates of jacaranda trees spanning 1927-2019,” she said.
“The advance in flowering took place against a backdrop of warming temperatures, ranging from 0.1-0.2°C per decade for daily maximum temperatures and a more rapid 0.2-0.4°C per decade for daily minimum temperatures. Rainfall changes during this time were less uniform.”
The scientist said if plants flower too early in the year, they were at risk of frost damage during the late winter months, and often do not complete their dormancy.
But they warned these shifts cannot continue indefinitely.
“At a critical threshold, the flowering season will become unsuccessful,” she wrote.
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