Jacaranda flowers

Jacaranda flowers cluster

Jacaranda flowersA final response to the last edition of the WordPress photo challenge with a theme of ‘All time favorites.’

I headed back to Pu’u Wa’awa’a last week, because this is the time of year when several kinds of trees are in bloom. One of those trees is the jacaranda, which blooms from April to June, and produces masses of blue to lavender flowers. Jacarandas prefer cooler elevations so the lower areas of Pu’u Wa’awa’a are right in their zone.

I wasn’t disappointed. Several trees were covered with these delicate flowers, which somewhat made up for the fact that the entire hill was shrouded in thick vog, exacerbated by the ongoing eruption down in Puna.

Jacaranda flowers and bee

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6 thoughts on “Jacaranda flowers”

    1. Graham Post author

      I like the jacarandas too, delicate, but very colorful. Air quality up here at the north end of the island is still good. Since the eruption began, the trade winds have been quite steady so the south east coast has born the brunt along with the west coast up to Kailua Kona. It’s brutal down in the area of the eruption. The latest flow has erased a couple of small coastal communities, as well as half the subdivision where it started. What used to be Kapoho Bay has been filled in and is now more like Kapoho Point. In places that have escaped being directly affected by the flows, all the vegetation has died because of the gaseous emissions. Today I saw a video of the summit crater that I visited about a month ago. It’s unrecognizable as huge parts of it have collapsed because of the lava lake disappearing. I Sure hope it all settles down soon.

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      1. The Snow Melts Somewhere

        That is such an extreme thing to experience. Glad to hear the trade winds are taking care of the air quality. When Iceland had that eruption back in 2010, it affected air traffic for weeks (I was working for an airline back then). I wonder if planes are able to come and go as usual over there? It’s a shame for the communities and animals that had to flee. But volcanic ash is supposed to be very good for growth so the plants will probably grow back quickly, I assume (?).

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        1. Graham Post author

          It’s not much of an issue for air traffic. There are restrictions in place, because of the potential for ash explosions from the summit, but only one of those has gone up to 30,000 feet. The rest have been much lower. So planes just have to go around the relatively small area affected. As I remember, the Iceland eruption just kept hurling ash high into the atmosphere. I think areas where plants have died from gasses or ash coverage will recover relatively quickly, in part because the soil is pretty good and there’s lots of rainfall. Places covered by new lava will take a good deal longer. The current flow is in an area where another one occurred in 1960 and large areas of that one are still barren lava.

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