Old Friends

I don’t know why I find it hard to accept the idea that trees have a life cycle. Perhaps it's just that their journey seems to proceed at a vastly slower pace than ours. But their lives are of course finite and that has important implications for the tree canopy in Los Angeles, as recent newspaper coverage reminds us.

A major story on the topic appeared in the "Home" section of the Los Angeles Times Nov. 23, written by a very talented reporter, Emily Green. Green began her story this way:

It is a wistful event when a wildflower fades, and distressing when a shrub punks out, but it is hard to capture the sense of loss when a good tree finally quits. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we time our lives in sympathy with trees. We know our streets by the fluttering soldiers that line them. A blue haze of jacarandas declares summer on one block, while the flashing of a jay from an oak announces autumn on the next.

The older the tree, the deeper the associations. So it seems unthinkable that an old tree might die, or in the case of our frontyard parkway trees, entire stretches of them at a time.

According to Green, the simultaneous demise of "entire stretches" of L.A. street trees is a real prospect here, as the current generation of Angelenos has evidently not done enough to ensure a replacement for today’s canopy, largely planted in the middle decades of the last century and before. There is hope, however, in the form of programs that aim to make up for lost time, most notably Mayor Villaraigosa’s “Million Trees L.A.” initiative, which incorporates a number of concepts for new street and residential planting, including the key concept of “succession planting.”

The art to succession planting is creating a multilayered generation of trees so when a grand old specimen reaches the end of its life, there is a strong family line behind it. What we need to do now isn't fire up buzz saws, but look at where else succession trees might go, consider timing by five-, 10- and 15-year intervals, what the space will allow, and how the property will feel when the biggest tree eventually comes out.

The stakes are high, Green reminds us:

Trees sequester air pollution, prevent erosion and absorb rain that would otherwise become storm-water runoff. Their leaves become soil conditioner. Trees reduce summer electricity bills by 30%, muffle bad sounds and fill up with enchanting song birds. Trees beautify communities. They are the only city assets that increase with value with age.

Interestingly, one tree that will have little or no role in officially sanctioned efforts to preserve the canopy is its most familiar member, an L.A. icon, the stately palm. Green notes that earlier this month, following a recommendation from the city planning department, the Los Angeles City Council voted to discourage the planting of new palms in favor of broad-leaf shade trees.

The palm tree’s fall from L.A. grace has also been catalogued smartly by Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times, who began her Nov. 26 story with a mordant lede: “The palm tree, like so much here, rose to fame largely because of vanity and image control, then met its downfall when the money ran out.”

Sounds a bit like the Great Gatsby, arboreal division. In Steinhauer’s version of history, “land barons relocating to Los Angeles and Hollywood from the East decided that palm trees denoted the easy life, and began planting them at their home and offices…”.

But times have changed. Today’s more enlightened city fathers are cognizant of the palm tree's many deficiencies. Its long fronds dry up and fall to the ground in strong winds, bringing harm to parked cars and sometimes even pedestrians. They are much poorer than broad-leaf shade trees at cleansing carbon monoxide from the air. They provide far less shade and do less to retard heat build-up over the city’s asphalt-covered surface.

And they are high maintenance. Yes, we’re talking dollars:

Palms are hard to care for, so hard that the city has a line in its tree-trimming budget just for them. Last year, it was approximately $385,000, but proper care dictates an expense of about $630,000 per year, said Nazario Sauceda, the assistant director of the bureau of street services in the city’s Department of Public Works.

Many of the trees planted in the 1950s “are getting toward the end of their lives,” Mr. Lai said. “Some are 80 to 100 feet high and 70 years old, and these are not self-cleaning palms,” which means they need maintenance to remove old fronds.

Last year, the city removed nearly 8,000 cubic yards of dried palm fronds from the public right of way, Mr. Sauceda said.

I would offer some quibbles to Steinhauer's account. Palm trees may not be native to the Los Angeles basin or coastal valleys, but many, particularly the Washingtonia variety, are California “in-migrants,” as it were, with a point of origin no more distant than the Mojave or the Coachella deserts. That certainly gives them a stronger claim to exist here than crape myrtles, which Steinhauer erroneously lists as indigenous, but which in fact originate from China, Korea and Japan.

And then there’s the following Steinhauer jibe:

For Americans looking for personal reinvention, palm trees are part of the physical evidence that Los Angeles is the right place to be, up there with the Hollywood sign peeking out from Beachwood Canyon and swimming pools that shimmer in October.

Yes, life here is one big Nathaniel West novel, just as New York Times editors constantly seem to imagine. Of course, as a fourth-generation Angeleno, I might have to call in the movers if “personal reinvention” is the mandate.

I’m kidding a little. I’m actually an admirer of Steinhauer’s coverage of Los Angeles and Southern California, which is generally excellent. And there’s undoubted merit to the point of view she’s reporting on here. There is a certain falsity underlying the palm’s dominance of the city’s skyline. It is indeed a reflection of deliberate efforts to project a paradisiacal image of L.A. that simply isn’t true. And yes, in a financially hard-pressed municipality, costs have to be questioned and justified. Finally, there is simply no disputing the notion that shade and air quality are far more important concerns than romance or nostalgia.

But perhaps a native can be forgiven a certain regret at the palm’s fall from favor. I live on the edge of Windsor Square, where the palms predate World War I. They are old friends and they are beautiful (even if some are showing signs of great age and a few are visibly dying). Also remarkably beautiful are the palm groves of Elysian Park, the palm triplets that line the Wilshire Boulevard median along the Miracle Mile and the famous and much-photographed stand of palms at Venice Beach. I can’t help it – I can’t imagine L.A. without these wonderful trees.

Pictured, fall foliage on Norton Avenue in Windsor Square, with a sweet gum tree and a date palm side-by-side. Nearby, fan palms loom high over Fifth Street.

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Another old friend has been on my mind in recent days – Bill Bamattre, who resigned yesterday as chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Like Bernie Parks, Bill and I are alumni of Daniel Murphy High School, an all-boys Catholic school near the Miracle Mile. I graduated just a year ahead of Bill. We weren’t close friends, but we served together in student government, where Bill was always a voice of reason and good sense. I think you’ll get fundamentally the same description of Bill from anyone who knew him in those days. What was most remarkable about him was not the fact that he was both a star athlete and scholastically brilliant, but that there was never the slightest indication that any of this went to his head. It would be hard to imagine a nicer or more unpretentious guy. Among Murphy students, he was widely and genuinely liked and admired, for good reason.

I ran into Bill a couple of years ago at a Murphy reunion and was pleased to encounter the same warmth and cordiality I remembered from high school.

It’s been unpleasant to watch Bill’s march along the plank in recent weeks, with bloviating pols pushing at him from behind. I don’t know what it will take to change the problematic culture of the LAFD, but it did not escape my notice that even some of Bill’s harshest critics praised the operational excellence that is his legacy as chief. For that, all of us who live in this city should acknowledge a debt of gratitude. And Bill can count on his old friends remembering him as fondly as ever.

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Green, Emily. "Planting the Future One Tree at a Time." Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2006.

Steinhauer, Jennifer. "City Says Its Urban Jungle Has Little Room For Palms." New York Times, November 26, 2006.

Helfand, Duke, and McGreevy, Patrick. "Fire Chief Bamattre to Step Down Jan. 1." Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2006