My old friend and hobby historian, the late Walter Rusch, collected everything and anything to do with Namibian history. After he passed on his son-in-law came across a box filled with hundreds of magazines, including old Scope, Panorama and Huisgenoot magazines. Knowing that he needed to contact me before he threw anything out, he gave me a call. I was delighted to go through the magazines and found many treasures, among them a Huisgenoot magazine from 30th January 1970, which cost 10 cents, with the front-page headline: ‘So het Windhoek sy wit jakarandas gekry’ (This is how Windhoek got its white jacarandas).
It's October, the month when Windhoek’s streets are lined with purple and white jacarandas, so the story couldn’t be more apt. The cover photo shows a smiling model Wanda Hanssen holding the leafy branches with the white blooms, while the inner pages show photographs of senior-superintendent of gardens, Peter Strohbach, with a collection of small trees.
As the story goes, in the early 60s high-ranking South African official, CR Swart, impressed a group of visiting Americans with his love for plants and the natural world. When they returned home, they decided to send him a gift of three white jacaranda trees for his Pretoria gardens.
At the time the white jacaranda was quite rare and the gift was a precious one. The exchange didn’t end there and the Americans in turn received a collection of plants from the country, including a welwitschia, the Namib’s wonder plant.
The Namibians - Southwesters of the time - requested one of the white jacarandas in exchange for their welwitschia. Swart agreed. The white jacaranda was planted in Windhoek in 1964.
There were different methods used to propagate the trees. While Pretoria chose to wait for the trees to bloom and then collect the seeds, in Windhoek the one jacaranda tree was used to graft hundreds of white jacaranda trees onto the purple jacarandas, which had been planted thirty or forty years earlier. What started off as an experiment proved to be very successful and soon Windhoek had over a hundred white jacaranda trees. The news spread quickly and all the schools wanted one in their garden. Orders were placed and the white jacaranda was a source of pride for the schools.
The different propagation methods meant that Windhoek had a head start on growing white jacarandas and had flowering jacarandas long before Pretoria did. The white jacarandas were - and still are - Windhoek’s pride and joy, and October wouldn’t be the same without the jacarandas in full bloom.
Just like the Namibians the trees flourish in dry conditions, revealing their strength and tenacity.
(If you had a white jacaranda at your school, please share your story and photographs with us, we’d love to hear from you.)