Archive: Flora

Even those Angelenos who like the promiscuous sprouting of non-native Mexican fan palms across the urban terrain will have to agree these are misplaced.

Also: The "super bloom" of yellow mustard across SoCal hillsides needs to be stopped.

I love the California history behind this story of fruits and nuts.

Climate change, the drought and development pressure are all taking a toll on the symbolic succulents that grow only in the Mojave Desert.

Drought gardener and blogger Emily Green wants people to remember that they need to deep-water their trees or the drought can have a worse effect than necessary.

This fan palm is trying to poke out of a storm drain in Altadena. Click to see it bigger.

Palm tree zoo? It's almost as if the three fan palm young 'uns have come to visit a jailed parent.

My Monday segment on KCRW and a collaboration between the LA Review of Books and Flaunt magazine show the ongoing power of the palm in the LA narrative.

The fifteen Barouni olive trees were transported to LA on large trucks and transplanted into the plaza outside the museum.

The heart of old Van Nuys is lousy with mature fan palms. Indiscriminate placement is the rule.

It turns out if you plant Mexican fan palms in Utah, they freeze and die. Go figure. Plus Mojave's two bent palms, Moorpark's two criss-crossed trees, and palms for the Bay Bridge?

Here are two more LA palm trees that don't fit with their current locations -- plus one I do admire and KPCC's "Off-Ramp" takes on the subject.

The parking lots at Dodger Stadium have more ridiculous palm trees per square mile than just about anywhere in Los Angeles.

This native Angeleno has finally seen one too many palm trees. Occasionally we'll highlight one that stands out, even in this city of misplaced Washingtonia and Phoenix.

Los Angeles photographer Sungjin Ahn has captured some marvelous images of Joshua trees against the desert and the sky and put them into a lovely Vimeo time lapse.

The Rim fire in and around the west side of Yosemite National Park jumped Monday to 160,980 charred acres, with new evacuations outside the park. But firefighters were able to declare 20% containment.

The documentary photographer Bruce Davidson is known mostly for his images of New York — and not the softer sides of the city. Recently he has been dropping into Los Angeles for weeks at a time to shoot mostly in the hills and canyons. Palm trees, yuccas and the ivy growing on the undersides of freeway bridges factor in his LA pictures.

There is reason to believe this solitary fan palm near the Coliseum on the edge of Exposition Park is the oldest palm tree in the city. History writer Nathan Masters has tracked the tree through a series of moves.

If you are not here and are wondering what season it is in Los Angeles, it's jacaranda season. The streets are flush with purple, and soon the sidewalks will be too.

Remember our report in April on the twin agave century plants just starting to sprout in Meg Sullivan and Steve Roe's front yard? Well you better look again.

The recycling of Christmas trees in Los Angeles County is actually kind of complicated. Some will be buried in landfills, but still be considered recycled. And it makes sense.

Photos: Yuccas thrive in the foothills on the north side of the San Gabriel Mountains. If there's one plant more iconic of the Mojave, it could be the tumbleweed.

The lake bed is currently exposed and the dirt is being pushed around to form habitat for fish to thrive and plants to grow. "The lake bed has to be lined to keep the water from seeping into the ground. What would that look like, I wondered?," Judy Raskin writes at The Eastsider LA.

Next month's move of the retired space shuttle Endeavour through Inglewood, Crenshaw and South Los Angeles to its permanent home at the California Science Center is forcing the removal of more than 400 mature street trees. Plus: no more palms in Fillmore, and one giant of a local oak tree.

Some sidewalk trees in Westwood Village are bearing signs that announce they will soon be removed. Like in many areas of the city, Westwood's sidewalks are being cracked or buckled by tree roots.

After the Station Fire denuded vast areas of Angeles National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service made a crucial call to plant seedlings from species of fir and pine trees that nature had already decided didn't really fit with the larger plan for the San Gabriels. Yeah, nature wins again — but what does Chevron have to do with it all? LA Observed photos from the fire zone.

Judy Graeme noticed an especially bad sidewalk rupture on Prosser Avenue, just below Pico in Rancho Park.

President of the Huntington Library and botanical gardens asks for financial help to clean up "extensive" damage from last week's winds.

Meg Sullivan photograph from the Rancho Park neighborhood.

On her blog, the novelist uses verse to mark the century-old eucalyptus' passage into firewood and sawdust.

Over half the specimens at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden suffered some kind of wind damage. Sobering pictures.

The National Weather Service update for Mammoth Mountain contained a startling fact.

Wilson, who pledged to plant five trees a day for the rest of his life, died after losing consciousness while taking clippings from a tree in hi sgarden.

Yesterday was turf-laying day at Dodger Stadium.

That planted rectangle on the 110 near Downtown that Caltrans sold to Toyota last year for a Prius ad is being given a baseball-themed message.

White crosses were laid out over the former site of Toyota's floral ad for the Prius beside the Pasadena Freeway near Downtown. A sign reads, "You Reap What You Sow."

USA Today jumps on the palm tree story, pointing out that demand in Las Vegas and Arizona has pushed prices to $20,000 for some Canary Island palms while noting that...

There's no denying that palm trees are an iconic feature of the Los Angeles landscape, despite being non-native and ecologically almost worthless. In this week's CityBeat (out today), David Davin...