When we were building the house we deliberately chose to paint the three gates that lead into the courtyard of the house an intense and dark purple. Some people find it an odd choice as purple doesn’t necessarily seem like a color that is well represented in the desert. However, we did our research and found that purple is indeed a desert color in both bloom and in cactus paddle forms.
We looked around our house and found several examples of purple in the environment that fairly closely match our gate color.
From left to right the blooms represented are:
Jacaranda mimosifolia (Jacaranda Tree)
Duranta erecta (Sky Flower Vine)
Leucophyllum frutescens (Texas Ranger)
Dalea spinosa (Smoke Tree)
Of these four plants, the first three are landscape plants while the final one is a native tree. All of them clearly show the natural occurrence of purple color palettes in the desert environment and it was from this inspiration that we chose the color for all of our gates.
We also have Optunia sp paddle cactus that feature purple edges on the paddles, but the photographer forgot to include those…perhaps in a future post!