It was Alexis Murphy\u2019s tradition to photograph the jacaranda that guarded her childhood home in Pasadena. One year, she arranged its violet droppings in the shape of a heart. Another year, she turned them into a cartoon smiley face.<\/p>\n
But this spring, after the January Eaton fire scorched her childhood home and the jacaranda along with it, the scene was too grim to capture. Where the aged tree\u2019s limbs once exploded into violet, singed branches crisscrossed in colorless sterility like an unfinished painting.<\/p>\n
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Alexis Murphy didn\u2019t expect her jacaranda tree to flower this year after it was partially burned in the January Eaton fire. <\/p>\n
(Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Murphy didn\u2019t want to post something too depressing. So she snagged a flower from a neighbor\u2019s lawn and filmed a close-up of the blossom, panning out to her burned tree.<\/p>\n
That was when she saw it.<\/p>\n
Barely discernible in the May gloom, a glint of purple shone from the jacaranda\u2019s canopy; nearby, seed pods dotted patches of green. The tree was in bloom.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, my God, maybe it is coming back,\u201d she said, half-wishing for the tree\u2019s revival. <\/p>\n
Jacarandas, among the most divisive<\/a> of L.A.\u2019s imported plant species, have long signified to Angelenos the coming of warmer, more vibrant days. Their symbolic weight has been all the greater for those who lost their homes to the January wildfires that devastated L.A. County as well as swaths of its natural landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cAny tree that\u2019s leafing out or recovering is a sign of hope for everyone, and I think people really take some joy in that,\u201d said David Card, a longtime Pacific Palisades resident and board president of the Palisades Forestry Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it\u2019s not all doom and gloom,\u201d Alexis Murphy said to herself when she saw the blooms in the canopy of her burned jacaranda tree.<\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, it\u2019s the jacarandas that are center stage,\u201d Card said.<\/p>\n A post-fire jacaranda bloom<\/p>\n Originating in subtropical South America, jacarandas typically bloom around May and June, taking their cue from the season\u2019s first stretch of consistent heat. In wetter years, the 25- to 40-foot-tall trees may not push out flowers until well into July.<\/p>\n Alexis Murphy touches the burned jacaranda tree that formerly guarded her parents\u2019 since-destroyed home in Pasadena. <\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n This year, hot spells in May encouraged some early bloomers, said Lisa Smith, a consulting arborist and president of the tree-consulting firm the Tree Resource.<\/p>\n Still, at the time of the January fires, the semi-deciduous trees had not yet flowered, which likely minimized the damage they suffered.<\/p>\n The arborist said what also helped is that jacarandas are highly heat-tolerant and generally planted among low grasses rather than tall shrubs, limiting the potential for upward burn.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re a pretty rugged, tolerant species. They can handle harsh conditions,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n Because jacarandas across the county sustained significant bark char and crown damage, L.A.\u2019s purple bloom was down some patches this year. The issue might worsen. Healthy-seeming flowering on trees like Murphy\u2019s could be a \u201cfalse start\u201d belying the plant\u2019s sickness, Smith said.<\/p>\n Trees have been known to experience delayed deaths<\/a> years after a wildfire has been extinguished.<\/p>\n Even in cases of more severe scarring, biology professor Gretchen North said, \u201cthe jacaranda looks like it will recover.\u201d<\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n Nonetheless, researchers in Pasadena and the Pacific Palisades shared positive outlooks for the trees\u2019 future recovery.<\/p>\n Gretchen North, a biology professor at Occidental College, said plant recovery efforts in the canyons above Altadena have revealed that jacarandas have fared \u201cremarkably well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re blooming, even though they are burned at the base,\u201d North said. The professor added that most of the damage is limited to scorched bark. In cases of more severe scarring, North said, \u201cthe jacaranda looks like it will recover.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Palisades, the trees this year began flowering far earlier than expected, said Card.<\/p>\n Speaking for the trees<\/p>\n However, experts warned that L.A.\u2019s trees, including jacarandas, still face threats from post-fire recovery efforts.<\/p>\n For one, construction activities like excavation and soil compaction from heavy machinery can damage a tree\u2019s critical root zone, preventing uptake of water and nutrients crucial for the plant\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n For many jacaranda lovers, the labor of preservation was a knee-jerk reaction, like shielding a child from a blow.<\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n On a wider scale, activists said joint cleanup efforts by FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have prompted the premature removal of trees in the Palisades, hundreds of which were misidentified by unqualified contractors.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were bringing in people from states so far away they never even heard of jacarandas,\u201d said Carl Mellinger, a consulting arborist and member of the Palisades Forestry Committee.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my opinion, if you can\u2019t tell what the tree is, you have no business identifying its fiber-building period,\u201d Mellinger said. <\/p>\n A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that \u201cevery decision about tree removal is made thoughtfully and with expert guidance from professional arborists.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we strive to preserve as many trees as possible, public safety and recovery progress must come first,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe continue to work closely with homeowners, the county and community groups to make informed, responsible decisions about tree removal and preservation.\u202f\u201d <\/p>\n A representative for FEMA declined to comment. <\/p>\n Mellinger was able to work with a colonel to get the Army Corps\u2019 protocol changed and minimize errors, he said, \u201cbut there were still trees out there that were gonna get cut down, even though they were viable.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents whose injured trees were removed were surprised to find themselves more distraught about losing the trees \u2014 which would take decades to regrow \u2014 than losing their homes. <\/p>\n LuAnn Haslam, Murphy\u2019s next-door neighbor in Pasadena, said losing her jacaranda felt like a second wave of grief after her home burned down. For more than 25 years, she\u2019d marveled at the tree, one of her favorites gracing the street. When it blossomed each spring, coating her lawn in purple blooms, she\u2019d beg her husband, \u201cDon\u2019t clean those up!\u201d<\/p>\n Haslam said she didn\u2019t watch the cleanup crew remove the tree this year. She couldn\u2019t bear it.<\/p>\n For more than 25 years, Pasadena resident LuAnn Haslam marveled at the jacaranda tree on her street. (Luann Haslam) <\/p>\n For Haslam, losing her jacaranda felt like a second wave of grief after her home burned down. (Luann Haslam) <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one reason why I really pushed it on the colonel that you can\u2019t be cutting down these trees that are going to make it,\u201d Mellinger said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have already been through one disaster,\u201d he said. They needn\u2019t endure another.<\/p>\n The Palisades Forestry Committee in March published a waiver<\/a> for property owners that allowed them to retain so-called \u201chazardous\u201d trees on their property. Card said the system has largely worked, save for the occasional complication by an overly aggressive contractor.<\/p>\n However, arborists and activists agreed that Zone 0 regulations<\/a> may spell trouble for those working to preserve the Palisades\u2019 natural landscape. The defensible space directives, meant to minimize burn risk to homes and other structures, are poised to drastically reduce the number of trees permitted in residential L.A. neighborhoods, said North. <\/p>\n The trick, North said, will be balancing safety assurances that cities require with the green recovery that their residents need to move forward.<\/p>\n The flowers of your labor<\/p>\n Many factors affecting the survival potential of burned trees, including jacarandas, are out of individuals\u2019 control: the level and frequency of rain, the pace of bark generation, the passage of time.<\/p>\n Still, arborists said residents can take several steps to improve their trees\u2019 chances of recovery.<\/p>\n The most critical factor, Smith said, is water. Without it, scores of jacarandas won\u2019t even make it through the summer. <\/p>\n Arborists advise those nursing jacarandas back to health: \u201cDon\u2019t seek perfection.\u201d <\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t seek perfection. Just get water on the tree,\u201d Smith said. She added that those who live far away now can ask a neighbor or friend to place a tree watering bag<\/a> around the trunk of the injured tree. This way, water is slowly released, trickling down to the roots.<\/p>\n Smith added that if the tree is able to push out fresh leaves, residents can prune its dead branches and leave the live ones to foster \u201cmeaningful new growth in the canopy.\u201d<\/p>\n A good visual cue for a salvageable tree is the growth of new bark beneath its burned outer layer, said Mellinger.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to scrape the bark or cut under the bark to try and find the living tissue that\u2019s under the cambium and the inner bark,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Removing dead bark before watering a burned tree can also protect it from pests and pathogens, said Jim Henrich, curator of living collections at Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden.<\/p>\n Priority No. 1, Henrich said, is making sure water is actually saturating the soil. After that, all you can really do is wait.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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