Palm Sunset
What will Los Angeles mean without its palm trees?
By David Davin
The palm tree signifies lots of things that Los Angeles likes about itself. They're exotic, tropical, born of the desert, somehow at once a symbol of sun-baked survival and do-nothing opulence. They're also steadily disappearing from the L.A. landscape.
The stark symbology of the palm, it seems, has grown too expensive. Las Vegas and Phoenix have been planting forests of them, driving prices upward. Now, as L.A.'s aging palms come down, very few are ever replaced.
"In the last 10 years, palm tree prices have doubled," says Dr. Henry Donselman, a palm consultant. "The expansion in Las Vegas and Phoenix has had an enormous affect [on the prices]. The palm business is exceedingly good right now."
Good for anyone selling a palm tree, that is, but not for buyers. Steve Dunlap, a tree surgeon with the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department, says the trees are coming down in increasing numbers as they age.
Many of the palm trees in the Crenshaw and Inglewood areas, for example, the tall, swaying Mexican Fan Palms, were planted in the 1930s for the first Olympics. Now, many of the older trees must come down. "We've had to take down more palm trees lately," Dunlap says.
Age and price are not the only threats. "There's a virus out there - the Pink Crown Rot - that is causing a lot of problems," says Dunlap.
"If the trunk is infected, [the virus] is fatal in most cases," according to David Lofgren of the Los Angeles County Arboretum.
To some unsentimental types, however, it would not be so bad to see the palm trees fade into the sunset.
"They have no ecological or environmental value whatsoever," says Carmen Wolf, program director for the Theodore Payne Foundation, which operates a native California plant nursery. Organizations like Wolf's and the California Native Plant Society say that because palm trees are not native to the region in most cases (with the exception of the California Fan Palm or the Desert Fan Palm), they are not only more susceptible to disease and rot, but also damaging to the native ecology.
Steve Hartman with the California Native Plant Society argues that, while there may be no native ecology in the inner cities of Southern California anymore, there are certainly outlying areas to consider. "A person thinks it's not so bad to have a palm in their backyard in the middle of the city ... but then the birds eat the seeds, fly to areas where there are no palms ... and then you have whole new areas [growing palm trees]."
Virginia Postrel, a longtime observer of Los Angeles society and author of The Substance of Style, says the idea that Los Angeles is - or can be - anything like it was in its native state is ridiculous. "The idea that you're going to somehow have this pristine identity that's sheltered from anything that's not 'natural' - that we should all just go away - it's biological xenophobia."
Postrel goes on to argue that palm trees are essential to Los Angeles's sense of place. "For somebody that has lived here for many years, I have a positive response when I see the tall palm trees that represent L.A," she says.
Donselman agrees. "It would be a big mistake if [Los Angeles] were to go away from palms. People come here as tourists because of the uniqueness of the climate. The palm tree symbolizes that [climate]," he says.
Dunlap at Parks and Recreation says that it's all well and good to love palm trees, but he has no budget to replace them. The city depends upon a complex network of nonprofit organizations to fund new plantings.
"None of these organizations are buying palm trees," explains Dunlap. "Two trees we're not planting anymore are eucalyptus and palm trees."
Nor are palm trees necessarily favored in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Million Trees Los Angeles Initiative, announced in 2006.
Paula Daniels, Commissioner of the Board of Public Works and in charge of the Million Trees L.A. initiative, says that while palm trees will not be excluded per se, "they are not going to be part of our concerted effort." Daniels says that because "palm trees don't provide the same energy savings or offer any air or water quality improvement," they would not be part of any major plantings under the initiative.
"The distinctive identity of California and of Los Angeles is not a geographic and biologic identity nearly as much as it is a cultural, historical, and experiential identity," says Postrel. That identity, she notes, is also one of immigration and reinvention. Like the palm, few Angelenos are native.
"What the palm tree really represents is an oasis," she adds. "Los Angeles is a manmade oasis; a place in the middle of the desert with water and people - lots of people - in it. So the palm tree is the perfect tree for Los Angeles."
Published: 08/24/2006
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