Palm Sunday

With Moe Stuck:

Legal Planet.org, Ban The Palm? "Streets For All Wants To — But Is it More About Attention Than The Environment?"

Palm trees are not native to Los Angeles. They are tropical plants, and this region is very much not tropical (at least not yet). Only one species derives from southern California, and it is not the most common one on the city’s streets and boulevards. So why are there so many palms here? Unsurprisingly, it’s from civic boosterism: thousands of palms were planted in preparation for the first time Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics, in 1932.

Now, an advocacy group, Streets For All, has decided to make a splash about it.

Streets For All has launched a social media campaign “Palm trees are a scam”, blasting the trees for guzzling water, providing little shade and being dangerous during fires and high winds.

“Time for LA to replace Palm Trees with trees that provide actual shade and cool down our city,” the group declared. “Palm trees suck at doing the one thing trees need to do in cities: provide actual shade,” the group argued.

They want the city to plant more broad-canopy trees, such as sycamores, which the group says provide more shade and help cool city streets.

On one level, SFA’s argument makes sense: if you are trying to create shade – and in the realm of climate adaptation, we will very much need to – taking out palm trees makes sense.

But the rest? Not so much.

My parent's house in Rancho Park had three very tall fan palms, and two huge Canary Island Date palms. They must have dated from that era. I just found it on line, and it looks like they're all gone. That makes me a little sad.