when is pink the new yellow?

We all have our favorite trees in Mexico.

Not surprisingly, most of those trees are favored for their blossoms.

My polling is certainly not scientific, but the most popular seems to be the jacaranda with its indigo flowers. When they are in bloom, Mexico City looks as if the sky has taken up residence in the trees.

But the local favorite here on the Pacific coast is probably the bright yellow primavera. Every year, I wax bit poetic about the groves between here and Cihuatlan.

When I flew into the Manzanillo airport last Saturday, I noticed that the vegetation on the hills has started to fade from its summer jungle green to its customary springtime gray. With one exception.

Almost everywhere were large blobs of rosy pink blossoms. Darker than cherry blossoms, but not as red as flamboyan flowers. During the last ten years I have flown into the airport, I do not think I have noticed them.

My friend Lou, who picked me up, told me he had been talking about those pinkish trees with his Mexican neighbors. They claim that the blossoms are so thick this year because of the odd rain patterns. But that did not answer what type of tree they were.

Lou helped out. He pointed out that one was blooming beside the highway just east of Barra de Navidad. And it was.

It is an amapa -- one of the few trees around here that was not imported from elsewhere. It is as American as the potato or the chili, and can be found throughout America from northern Mexico to southern Argentina.

I have heard some people refer to it as a pink primavera. The primavera and the amapa are genetically related. But, in one of those twists that Mother Nature loves, the primavera is not native to Mexico. Its home is Brazil. All of the primavera grown locally (even those wild groves) were lugged here through human agency.

Living in Mexico has given me an entirely new set of trivia to remember. I had researched the amapa several years ago. But it took seeing them from the air to pull it out of that dark corner in my memory closet where I store such matters as the capital of Burkina Faso and the third stanza of the national anthem.

Having flung open that closet door, I might as well share them with you.

And I have.

Unfortunately, like most flowering trees, the blossoming season for the amapa is over. The tree beside the road had only a few blooms remaining this morning.

Just another reminder how brief, fleeting -- and beautiful -- life is.