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I live near one of the rows of trees on that map, and I must say they are very pretty right now.

But one of Sydney's most famous jacarandas is missing from the map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaranda,_University_of_Sydne...

I was expecting that most of the "unique" trees would be in parks, e.g. the Botanic Gardens, but then looking at the distribution graph, wow, I can see so much diversity in the street trees "long tail"; almost as much as park trees.

Would be cool to see the rest of Greater Sydney as well!

We have a lot of them in Gauteng, South Africa; even though they're classified as an invader species. They can only be in urban areas and aren't allowed to spread. They look nice but smell like pee.

Here in South Africa we have lots of them too, especially in Pretoria which is informally known as "Jakarandastad". Looks beautiful around this time of year - blooming is usually Sep to mid Nov.

Example from a residential area: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAsHX4LXMAADEI1?format=jpg&name=...

Related: Jacarandas in Johannesburg - https://morukuru.com/news/jacarandas-a-passion-for-purple/

"it is estimated that here are now more than 70 000 trees in Pretoria which is affectionately known as Jacaranda City. Johannesburg is believed to be the largest cultivated urban forest in the world with over 10 million trees and the Jacaranda’s contribute substantially to this number, as thousands were planted as street trees, in parks and gardens. Although difficult to confirm, some experts say Johannesburg has even more of these glorious purple trees than Pretoria."

Also many in Lisbon.

From the article [1]:

They were brought by Felix Avelar Brotero, the father of Botany in Portugal, at the Ajuda Botanical Garden from 1811 to 1826. He offered seeds to whoever wanted to cultivate them in the city. They precede the return of the Portuguese Court from Brazil, at a time when blue spectrum pigments were very valuable. For the royalty this plant, due to its exoticism, had a non-commercial value: it was a way to demonstrate the royal power.

[1] https://www.visitlisboa.com/en/p/only-in-lisbon/jacarandas-t...

Aren't these considered invasive plants in Australia [1]

[1] https://weeds.brisbane.qld.gov.au/weeds/jacaranda

They are so ubiquitous here I've had conversations with multiple people who think they are native. Apparently, seedlings were given to new parents from a maternity hospital in southern Sydney back in the day which helped their spread.

Sadly, their reputation seems to overshadow the native Illawarra Flame Tree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachychiton_acerifolius) which itself is showing off vibrantly right now. I'm lucky enough to have a few in my street.

Off topic, but that website was quite unusual.

Judging by the title, I was expecting an article about perennial plants with elongated stems or trunks that usually support branches and leaves. Instead, I was met with a series of code blocks, briefly making me wonder if the piece was discussing a novel data structure based on traditional trees. After a few moments, the code blocks were either substituted or supplemented with the actual page content, reminiscent of Jupyter Notebooks. After about 10 seconds, it became unclear whether all the content had fully loaded.

Not the most user-friendly experience, in my opinion.

I live in Sydney and we have a bunch of these on the street. There’s also one in my next door neighbours small back yard growing over my house.

I think I might be in the minority but I really don’t like them. The tiny leaves fall all the time and make a mess, and the purple flowers smell really bad and also make a mess.

Not only do they make a mess but they block my gutters and the roots have destroyed a lot of sewer pipes. I’d much rather see some native Australian trees planted such as paper barks or flame trees. I really don’t get the love affair with them.

I wish someone would genetically engineer jacarandas so their blooms would last at least three times longer as by the time one realizes they're in bloom they're already making the ground mauve. The show is almost over before it starts.

Incidentally, that grouped listing of jacarandas in Sydney doesn't give a realistic picture of the total number of jacarandas. There are thousands of individual trees that transform the streets and you'd never know it from those figures.

I was surprised when I first saw a Jacarandá in Auckland, New Zealand. I was not aware that there were so many Jacarandás so far away from South America, nor that the name was the same in other languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacaranda:

>The name is of South American (more specifically Tupi-Guarani) origin, meaning fragrant.

There are other Tupi-Guarani words that made it to other languages, like Açaí, Piranha, Capybara, ...

Sydney has less than Brisbane

Love to admire the purple flowers of jacaranda trees (there are certain spots in Southern California where they are everywhere) but when they fall on the ground it creates a nasty mess.

Reminds me of that old text adventure game Jacaranda Jim on MSDOS.

You don’t one near your residence. They drop slippery leaves everywhere.

Here in Buenos Aires we love them :)

How big does it need to be to make it onto the database? I think that adding it as soon as it's planted would be best, so you could track growth etc.

The city of sydney (local government area) is a very small part of the overall city - this dataset is just that area which is also the most densely built part (26 square km vs 12,300 square km)

Heresy! ONS is die Jakarandastad. (PTA)

What exactly is "noxious" about jacarandas? Most of us people admiring them are also invasive species.

I had a quick look and it seems that the Brisbane claim is contentious (like these things often are), according to Australian Geographic:

Brisbane claims the earliest jacaranda tree in Australia, planted in 1864, but the Sydney Botanic Garden jacaranda is dated at “around” 1850, and jacarandas were listed for sale in Sydney in 1861.

Either way they've been here quite a while, and longer than many family lines that consider themselves Australian. The midwife story I mentioned is also contentious because there are a few myths going around about North Sydney in particular, but I think the one from Sutherland had some facts backing it up, including a man who remembered gathering them as a child.

Good point! I was playing around with a "fun" title and really just wanted to map out all the Jacaranda trees in my area.

I've now updated the notebook and made sure the tree count is clearly mentioned.

Haha cute story...they stayed married..

Another tree used as a street tree here is white cedar (native) and it would have the same problem with rotting flowers, plus far more annoying fruit/berries that cause slips and try to start rogue trees all over the place.

Incidentally, what are considered ideal street trees? I know plane trees are out of favour (lots of leaf litter, annoying flower ball thingies). Crepe myrtles aren't tall enough for roadside plantings.