PHOTO BY STEVEN MADOW
Local photographer Steven Madow (Instagram | Website) has launched a public map that lets Orlando-area residents flag the locations of tabebuia trees as they start blooming across Central Florida. The project, found at OrlandoTabs.com, is designed to help people find peak blooms in real time and share locations with others who want to photograph or simply enjoy the seasonal color. That’s right, Orlando has seasonal color.
A tabebuia tree is a showy, deciduous flowering tree known for its colorful seasonal blooms. Native to Central and South America and well-suited to Central Florida’s climate, tabebuias (pronounced: tab-a-boo-ya) are most recognizable in late winter and early spring, when they drop most of their leaves and erupt in clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers. The blooms range in color from bright yellow to soft pink, lavender, and white, often covering the entire canopy and carpeting the ground below in fallen petals. Very dramatic.
Madow shared his project on Reddit earlier this week, telling users he had begun spotting blooms, especially pink trees, and wanted to share a crowd-sourced tracker to help find the best locations.
In a phone interview, Madow said he used the AI tool Claude to help build the site in roughly two days, leaning on basic coding knowledge from his day job in product management. The goal is simple: people who see a tabebuia in bloom can open the site, submit a photo, and drop a pin on the map where the tree is located. Madow recommends doing it on a phone while standing near the tree so the location is more accurate.
Madow said he started photographing tabebuias about 10 years ago after coming across a yellow tabebuia in bloom on a drive back to College Park from a sunrise photo session in downtown Orlando (check out the first photo below to see it for yourself). He pulled over and photographed the scene for about 30 minutes, and the trees became a seasonal obsession. He has also photographed cherry blossoms in Baltimore, where he’s from, and Washington, D.C., and said he understands the tourism potential of showy seasonal blooms when people know where to find them.
Asked about favorites, Madow pointed to a pink-and-yellow hybrid tabebuia at Harry P. Leu Gardens as a standout, and also mentioned a large pink tabebuia in Baldwin Park near the neighborhood entrance from Semoran Boulevard that many residents recognize as an early bloomer.
When asked if there was anything he wanted people to know about the project, Madow exclaimed, “Submit some trees so we can all enjoy them together. We could all enjoy some positive news.”
