Davis estimates that there are roughly 15 million more guns in circulation than there would be without the pandemic. Rise in gun violence: A researcher at U.C.

Lawmaker reveals abortion: Mia Bonta, a Democratic assemblywoman, disclosed that she had an abortion when she was 21, joining other public figures who have recently discussed their experiences with abortion, The Associated Press reports. Water use: Californians used significantly more water in March 2022 than they did in March 2020 despite the worsening drought, The Associated Press reports. “It’s an olfactory and aural experience, both ear and nose - and eye, also. Even as one walks over the fallen flowers, they often make a pleasant little popping sound as you tread over them,” he said. They have a very slight but definite scent. “Jacarandas are particularly appealing for pedestrians. The best way to enjoy the jacarandas, Waldie says, is not very L.A.: no Instagram and no car. “All of a sudden, there’s a circle on the ground of these evenly spaced flowers that have just fallen naturally from the tree and created this carpet.” “It is stunning just to see that symmetry,” she said. “On my account, I noticed in general that if there are any flowers, the likes go up by hundreds and hundreds.”ĭespite the social media clout, jacarandas are not universally beloved, and any post marveling at their beauty will probably get comments on both their nonnative status and the irksome petals they drop at the end of their spring flourish.īut Malarich finds the fallen blooms part of the charm. “People who do not normally take pictures of trees suddenly have these gorgeous photos of jacarandas,” she said. Carrie said that around this time every year, her Instagram feed is awash with jacarandas. Rachel Malarich, the Los Angeles city forest officer, said the 19,182 publicly managed jacarandas are mostly in “fair to very good” condition despite the oldest ones potentially nearing the end of their normal life spans.Īnd it shows. And yet here, in front of a quite ordinary house, you have this glorious blue, purple-blue interloper from the jungle.”

“We tend to think of suburban places in the early ’50s as being uniform, and frankly kind of uninteresting places. “The developers of tract-house suburbs in Southern California planted very consciously an exotic tree,” Waldie told me. Waldie, an author whose memoir, “Holy Land,” chronicles growing up in Lakewood, one of the first planned communities in the United States, said the jacarandas were an advertisement for the place. Their proliferation coincided with the population boom of Los Angeles - which grew to 2.5 million people in 1960 from 576,000 in 1920 - and the blue of their flowers became a shade of the Southern California idea in the American imagination.ĭ.J. Maybe you’ve even seen a residential street transformed into a technicolor tree tunnel. Sidewalks are littered with the sticky blossoms. “There’s no better remedy for curing tree blindness than a jacaranda in bloom.”Ĭhances are, if you live in Southern California, your neighborhood park has exploded in purple over the past few weeks. “The blooms are so extreme and incredible that it’s like the first time someone actually notices that there’s a tree,” she said of the flowering, typically between April and June. She is grateful to the jacarandas for their work. I wanted to ask you what it was?’ I said, ‘Did it have purple flowers? It’s a jacaranda.’ And I’m like, Oh, my god, how many years have you lived in Los Angeles?”Ĭarrie, who lives in Culver City, started the account to counteract “tree blindness,” the particularly urban syndrome of seeing but not noticing a city’s streetside forestry. Instagram account, gets the same question: “Someone said, ‘I saw a tree the other day, Stephanie. Every year, about this time, Stephanie Carrie, who started the Trees of L.A.

San diego trees with purple flowers