The Quad Jacaranda

The jacaranda in the Quadrangle is about nine years old. Say that first, because everything written about this tree is really about a different one: the jacaranda planted in the south-eastern corner in 1928 by Associate Professor Eben Gowrie Waterhouse, which toppled on 28 October 2016 after a root fungus ended 88 years of it. The BBC reported the death. What stands there now was planted on 20 July 2017 and is a genetic clone of the tree that fell, propagated so the replacement would be the same jacaranda rather than merely another one. That is worth being clear about. You are not looking at a tree from 1928. You are looking at its cutting, growing into the same corner of the same sandstone quadrangle, with a flame tree put in beside it as a companion the same year. The folklore transferred intact. Generations of Sydney students have held that if you have not started studying by the time the jacaranda flowers, you will fail your exams, which is a superstition that survives because the timing is genuinely cruel. The purple arrives in late October, just as the semester runs out. The Quadrangle is open to visitors through daylight hours and the tree is easy to find. In flower it draws a crowd with phones. Out of flower it is a young tree with a great deal expected of it.