Palms Away

When one thinks of Los Angeles, palm trees immediately come to mind.  Hardly a city block lacks a business with Palm in its name, and whether you’re in affluent Brentwood or the effluent neighborhoods near downtown, palms line the streets.  When visitors send postcards home, most likely they’re showing off palm trees.  We’ve got a few on our property.  They are an LA icon.

But they are not native to Los Angeles.

And they are dying off.

Research Los Angeles palm trees on the Internet and you’ll see plenty of postings bemoaning the palm trees’ demise and bellyaching that the city is doing nothing about it.  It’s true:  a fungus has hit the palm trees, most of which are the Canary Island date palm, two of which we have in the yard.  City officials don’t know how to combat this fungus, so they are not replacing the palms as they die off.  Instead, Parks and Recreation employees are planting native trees such as oaks and sycamores.  Angelinos are crying foul.  I say good riddance. 

One of the worst things humans can do to their surroundings is to introduce plants that are not native to the area.  I wouldn’t describe the local palms here in LA as “invasive species;” perhaps “useless species” is more appropriate.

Yes, the palm trees are really cool.  But they don’t provide shade.  They don’t do much to absorb carbon dioxide, which helps clean the air.  They are good at giving homeowners huge bills when they have to be trimmed (as in our backyard, which revealed a raccoon penthouse when the gardeners removed the dead fronds), and litter the streets when there are high winds and heavy rain.  So do they really benefit LA, other than aesthetically?

I would say no.  One reason why I love Silver Lake and surrounding neighborhoods such as Los Feliz and Echo Park is that we have old trees.  Walk throughout these hilly neighborhoods and you’ll be taken back to a time when natives trees (and silent film stars!) ruled, providing shade and holding up hill sides.  Then, drive down streets such as Beverly between Vermont and Western, and yes, you’ll see an occasional palm, but there is little vegetation otherwise, and these neighborhoods are hot, dusty, and well, just plain uncomfortable.  I look at the Los Angeles skyline after weeks without rain, and considering all that haze, I’ll stick with an oak or a sycamore, or even a juniper bush, any day.  And by the way, the Canary Island date palms bloom with a fruit that creates a huge mess (at our house, shih-tzu vomit after he AGAIN ingests a few!).  The City of LA, under Mayor Villaraigosa, aims to plant one million new trees—not including palms.  The success of this initiative is debated (we sure took advantage of it!), but in my view, we need more shade, not ornamental, trees.

Palms will not completely disappear.  Around USC and the LA Coliseum, Mexican palms, which the city planted before the 1932 Olympics, are still thriving.  So let’s make room for both—but for the sake of our air, when a palm tree dies, let's replace it with a tree that had existed here long before any of us, including our ancestors, moved here.