Algerian palms trees have been luring tourists for over a century - in California

[Al-khiyal]

"There's a fair amount of work involved in maintaining these trees,"
Spencer Knight, Palm Desert's landscape manager, says of the city's palms.
"Most people don't realize that."

PALM DESERT, July 1, 2007 - The desert's stately looking palm trees symbolize the region's fertile agriculture and postcard tourism.

They're iconic after more than a century.

The first commercial palm trees, imported from Algeria, were planted in 1903.

Today, palm trees dot the Coachella Valley's landscape. They line the main drag into Palm Springs, cool visitors in the Indian Canyons, shade hidden oases from Thousand Palms to North Shore and fan out across about 4,000 acres of groves mostly in Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.

But many peering through the tinted windows of air-conditioned autos can't imagine how much time and money cities such as Palm Desert spend on the palm trees growing on public land.

Manicured palms

Palm Desert has a trio of landmark palm trees on the corner of Highway 111 and Portola Avenue, where a neighborhood am/pm is located. The convenience store and gas pumps replaced a watering hole called Sunshine Meat Fish and Liquor.

The late Marian Henderson of Desert Beautiful and city officials insisted on preserving the palms - including the tallest one in town, topping out at 92 feet.

The palm, which sways during heavy winds, stands in the middle of the sidewalk, in a diamond-shaped area cut out to allow plenty of room for growth.

Palm Desert has roughly 3,000 palm trees on city property, and pruning each one costs $20 to $25 annually - depending on tree-trimming bids - said Spencer Knight, the city's landscape manager.

In April, boom trucks hoist workers skyward to prune date palms while chipping machines below gnaw away on brown, dead palm fronds.

By late June, crews are finishing up the pruning season by manicuring California fan palms.

Keeping track

Palm Desert is now doing an inventory of all the trees on public property - not just palms. The list should be finished in about three months. It's exhaustive and costs about $4.10 per tree.

Each tree gets a number and a GPS location. Its height, trunk width, overall health and any possible public safety risks are noted and put on a special computer program.

When each tree was pruned and whether any insect or disease problems were noted is also recorded.

"It's hard to manage a resource if you don't know how big it is," Knight said. "If you don't have good records, you don't really know what you're looking at.

"Because trees live so long, things can creep up on them over 15 or 20 years," he said.

Meanwhile, a small cadre of city workers keeps track of trees and other landscaping along streets, boulevards, in parks and at the city's golf resort, Desert Willow.

Knight supervises four landscape inspectors and a senior inspector.

Too much pruning

As an arborist, Knight is picky about the pruning of palm trees. He bars tree trimmers from using climbing spikes, which tear into the trunk. In addition to scarring, the practice can mean tree infections, Knight said.

He warns about overpruning practices that leave only a few palm fronds on top - what he calls the "paintbrush" effect.

Many people mistakenly believe doing that will save them from having to prune as often.

Actually, a full canopy at the top creates the food that the palm tree thrives on, Knight said. When the food supply is reduced, the root system shrinks, and the tree can't pull in needed water and minerals. The tree then must use the food stored in its trunk, Knight said.

"They're in a survival mode," he said.

The arborist warns about overpruning palm trees - from backyards to city streets.

"You should remove less than 20 percent of the foliage," Knight said.

Brown, dried-out fronds should be removed, but the green ones shouldn't be nicked in the process, Knight said.

He admired a pruned palm tree just outside his office window at the Civic Center, the afternoon sun glinting through it.

"There's a fair amount of work involved in maintaining these trees," Knight says. "Most people don't realize that."

Palmy pursuits keep crews busy in desert city

[Al-khiyal]

August 31, 2007 -- Recently three palm trees just north of the Wilshire-Highland intersection were removed to make way for a southbound left-turn lane. This move came despite the landmark status of Highland’s palm-studded median, which fortunately did not preclude this common-sense traffic solution. The new lane instantly ended treacherous gridlock at an intersection where hundreds of students from John Burroughs school cross. Not incidentally, it also improved life for residents on surrounding streets.

It took some years beyond initial estimates for the lane to get built. We in Los Angeles take our palm trees seriously and when word spread that three would be removed, some objected. There are many in our community who still remember the fight to save the palms of the Highland median, back in the 1980s.

But the removal may just be the beginning of the end for the Highland palms, and others we’ve grown to love. These trees are nearing the end of their life expectancy of 75 to 100 years. If you’ve ever seen any vintage photos of our area, circa 1910-1930, you’ve seen newly planted palm trees, barely eye-level to a child. Today they have grown so tall they tower over houses whose streets they share; their minimal foliage is only visible if you crane your neck.

Certainly they cast no shade, except a long, thin stripe. Like an aging star, they look pretty good from far away, but up close you have to admit they’re past their prime.

Why this fascination with palm trees? Just as most Angelenos are not natives, neither are the palm trees, yet they are as much a symbol of our city as the Hollywood Bowl or Griffith Observatory. Palm trees appear in numerous real estate ads describing homes in Hancock Park. Author Elmore Leonard once said, “Los Angeles is Detroit with palm trees.” (Well, at least he found something to like here.)

Of the estimated 75,000 palm trees in Los Angeles, most are Mexican fan palms. Nearly 30,000 Mexican palms were planted as part of a beautification project for the 1932 Olympics, in mid-Wilshire, the Crenshaw district and parts south. A 2004 article in The Los Angeles Times quoted Don Hodel, horticulture advisor for the University of California system and author of “Exceptional Trees of Los Angeles” (California Arboretum Foundation). Hodel noted that in the wild, Mexican palms grow from 40 to 60 feet high, but in L.A., for reasons unknown, they have reached an incredible 100 to 150 feet. This great height represents a long life span, but the trees are not immortal.

The height makes removing the inevitable dead fronds extremely expensive, not to mention dangerous. And the momentum of a frond crashing to the ground from 100 feet up can cause serious damage to cars below — not to mention pedestrians. We’ve all had to deal with frond-strewn streets after the Santa Anas rip through, and it’s not fun.

In Hancock Park, as in other upscale neighborhoods around town, homeowners throughout the 1920s upgraded trees on their properties from Mexican palms to Canary Island date palms. That decision was most likely aesthetic, with cost a minor concern. These days, however, demand from Las Vegas casinos has forced prices for Canary Island date palms into the stratosphere. They cost up to $500 per foot of trunk, plus transporting and replanting.

Again according to the Los Angeles Times, “Spanish Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries brought the first date palms to California in 1769. A fruit industry built on seedlings from Algeria, Egypt and Iraq followed in the Coachella Valley in the early 1900s. From the 1880s onward, they became breezy emblems of the property boom.”

Last November, the City Council passed a motion to curb the planting of palm trees on city streets and medians. In fact, the city’s plan to plant a million trees in L.A. over the next five years is focused more on oaks, among other leafy trees that will provide shade and absorb auto emissions. Not exactly a tourist attraction, but they should make the squirrels happy.

Palm trees: yet another threatened L.A. landmark?

[amalgamate]

algerian palms! wow

i'll remeber that,