It’s (short-lived) jacaranda season! :)

One of my absolute favorite things about the extended, all-blossoms-on-deck spring in Portland is how the whole world smells like flowers. I’ll be biking or walking along and all of a sudden I will smell something amazing, and that is a thing that happens basically every day for at least two months. It is THE BEST.

Right now, the jacarandas are popping, and those are maybe the best of the best:)

Jacarandas are natively more of a tropical tree, but they do grow here scattered about (I just realized that there are so many of them along Highway 14 in Washington; who knew?). You may never really notice them except for right now, when they are nearly 100% purple from their blooms, which come out before their leaves.

.

(not my picture: this is from Wikipedia and shows a Jacaranda in India, where they can grow naturally. By Pawan Tikku – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

.

They have a really distinct, amazing smell. I almost always smell them before I see them, since they usually seem to be tucked away in someone’s yard — so my favorite game right now is the “find the jacaranda after I catch a random whiff on the breeze” game, which never fails to delight.

There are actually more of them scattered throughout Portland than you might think (like there’s one that you can smell right from the Hawthorne Bridge, for example:) If you’re psyched, you can probably smell them for another week or so, so go forth with your sniffers and behold;)

Side note: the street ash trees, after a somewhat unimpressive year in 2024, are also pretty off the hook right now. As are lilacs. I could go on;)