San Diego Cityscape: Making a case for palm trees in California landscaping and urban planning

Can you imagine San Diego without palm trees?

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and have associated palms with Southern California since I visited my cousins in Pasadena during the 1960s. When I arrived in my yellow VW for grad school in 1977, I was in awe of the spiky-haired sentinels along Mission Bay, the downtown waterfront and at San Diego State University. As time went by, I fell in love with the romance of palm fronds waving and rustling in hot dry Santa Ana winds.

Planted through the centuries for religious (Palm Sunday at the missions), iconic (Sunset Boulevard) and tropical (resorts) impact, palms have figured prominently in the California Dream as described by historian Kevin Starr and other writers. Postcards, tourist brochures, fiction, film and license plates have adopted them as SoCal signifiers.

But, other than in Balboa Park, the Golden Era of palms here is fading. The largest species for which our region is best known are disappearing: aging out, dying from disease such as fusarium (a fungus), palm weevil infestation or incinerated by wildfires. Today, palms are rarely recommended as street trees or for residential and commercial landscapes. In fact, it sometimes seems like war has been declared.

The Serra Palm, believed to be have been planted by a member of Father Junipero Serra’s expedition on July 2, 1769, and scarred by musket balls, was almost 183 years old when this photo was taken in 1952. It was cut down in 1957 after it sucumbed to a prolonged local drought and fungus.

(U-T file photo)

The city cut down five beloved Mexican fan palms in the Point Loma-Ocean Beach area in April, in spite of neighborhood protests and a lawsuit (subsequently dropped). Ostensibly, this happened because the 90-footers interfered with airport flight paths, but it strikes me that there are several 500-foot skyscrapers near the airport that won’t be coming down anytime soon. Elsewhere, the city is more empathetic. In University Heights, residents lobbied successfully for protection of Canary Island Date Palms from palm weevils, with regular spraying by city maintenance crews.

As anyone who has seen old photos of San Diego knows, our native landscape is generally low and scrubby. California live oak and pines including Torrey, firs and cedars, are among the handful of original arboreal residents.

Except for the desert fan palm (not to be confused with Mexican fan palms that line our streets), no palm trees are San Diego natives. Legend has it that Father Junipero Serra planted California’s first new palm, a date palm, in 1769, in what is now Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. Serra may or may not have actually planted the tree, but the event launched a proliferation. Today, around 50,000 palms — dozens of species — are among San Diego’s 250,000-plus street trees. Tens of thousands more palms can be found in commercial and residential landscapes.

While the future of palms in our region is up in the air, their ongoing resonance in art is undeniable. You know them from films set in California or exotic, tropical foreign locales. They are atmospheric in fiction. David Hockney painted them next to swimming pools and stark modern houses.

“Hello Mr. Soul II,” a painting of burning palm by Southern California artist Perry Vasquez.

(Courtesy of Perry Vasquez)

Artists seem drawn to the darker side of palms. As climate change accelerates, temperatures rise, and droughts are frequent, wildfires have torched countless Southern California palms. News photos of flaming palms in Santa Barbara captured the imagination of San Diego artist Perry Vásquez.

“You don’t really notice some things in the environment until something goes wrong and then they stand out,” said Vásquez, a Southern California native. “They are so ubiquitous they become familiar. My first reaction was emotional and intuitive, not intellectual in any way. I had no idea about the history of palm trees or their role in urban planning.”

As Vásquez began to consider palms as his subject matter, he read Jared Farmer’s book “Trees in Paradise,” an authoritative account of trees that define California, from palms, eucalyptus and citrus in Southern California, to redwoods and sequoias in Northern California. Farmer devotes 90 pages to palms. He intertwines botany with history, Hollywood, politics, tourism and urban development.

“The historical perspective pulled me in and I gradually went from someone who kind of despised palm trees to really being almost in love with them,” Vásquez said. “I think it’s a tragic story, them not being feasible for the future.”

Vásquez’ palm paintings depict flaming palms against broody skies. They were showcased at an exhibit at Quint Gallery in La Jolla earlier this year. His palm triptych was acquired by the Cheech Museum in Riverside, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego owns a couple.

California writer T.C. Boyle’s new novel “Blue Skies” has a cover that pictures a windswept palm surrounded by flames. Climate change and other forces at play in our state have shaped his apocalyptic fiction for decades. Boyle grew up in Peekskill, N.Y., and arrived in the Southwest as a young writer. Palms made a mixed first impression.

“I was in my early 20s before I saw one and it was the immediate and apparent symbol for me of southern climes,” he told me via email. “I had never been west of the Hudson nor south of Long Island and I flew with my girlfriend to visit her parents in Arizona. It was late at night when we arrived and as we waited for her father to pick us up I stepped outside and saw the palms there in all their alien glory. ‘Palms!,’ I exclaimed, thinking to drag her out the door to see this glorious sight, but she, inured to their presence, simply shrugged and said, ‘What’s the big deal?’”

Walter S. Lieber arrived in La Jolla in 1904. He later led efforts to clean Scripps Park and plant Washingtonia palm trees there, as pictured here.

(Courtesy of the La Jolla Historical Society)

Almost every San Diegan has a story about palm trees. Our 1970s house in Carlsbad came with three mature queens. They are stunning and although somewhat messy, we think their drought tolerance and low cost of maintenance make them keepers. Much as we love them, though, we did not include any new palms when our garden got a major makeover.

San Diego garden designer Nan Sterman, host of “A Growing Passion” on KPBS television, said she doesn’t use palms in new landscapes, unless homeowners insist, or where existing palms can be incorporated in her plans. In the case of potential clients who purchased a Craftsman-style house with a “tropical” landscape with dozens of palms, she suggested removing some. “When you point out to people that they look like a telephone pole with a poof on top, they go, ‘ohhhh, okay.’”

That palms are giants of our urban landscape is not in question. According to San Diego’s 2017 Urban Forestry Program, in the public realm we have 200,000 trees plus around 50,000 palms (biologically palms are not “trees,” and are closer to grasses or bamboo). All told, including residential landscapes, the city has 4 million to 5 million trees, according to the city’s ongoing inventories.

This vintage Balboa Park postcard features non-native palm trees planted on the House of Hospitality Patio.

(Courtesy of Dirk Sutro)

Among species found along Southern California streets today, four are by far the most common:

• Mexican fan palms are towering icons, reaching 90 feet. As their name implies, the leaves look like fans — or the palms of our hands. By some accounts, they can live for hundreds of years. One major downside: they invade and destroy native habitat.
• Slender elegant South American queen palms, with gray trunks that can reach 40 to 50 feet, and feathery fronds that extend to 15 feet. The fronds emerge directly from the tops of the trunks. Ivory flowers bloom in summer. They transform into “dates” that fall into messy heaps later in the year.
• Tapered king palms, Australian natives that can reach 40 feet, with fronds that sprout from green shafts at the tops of tan-gray trunks. Pink flowers in summer form reddish fruits that eventually fall to the ground.
• Canary Island date palms, with broader bushier crowns than kings, queens or fan palms, and with striking orange flower stalks. They grow more slowly and can reach 25 feet. They bear fruit, but are not “true” date palms like the Phoenix dactylifera that power Indio’s date industry. Canary Island palms likely face extinction here due to South African palm weevil infestation.

San Diego City Forester Brian Widener had been a city forester for several years in New York City until he took the job here in 2017. His experience with palms was limited. Growing up in Sonoma in Northern California, he and his brother played driveway basketball with a hoop nailed to a small palm. In New York, the only palms he knew of were in the atrium of the World Financial Center. They perished on 9-11, but all have been replaced — so at least a handful of palms still tropicalize the Big Apple.

In San Diego, Widener is mindful of palms as beloved San Diego icons, but said they are not very practical as street trees. They don’t provide shade for pedestrians — shade that also cools streets and sidewalks that otherwise reflect and radiate heat.

Mexican fan palms at Doheny State Beach in San Juan Capistrano.

(Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile, San Diego’s need for “canopy cover” is greater than ever, to counteract the impact of global warming, drought and air pollution. The city’s 2017 Urban Forestry Plan calls for increasing our canopy cover from around 13 percent to 30 percent in 2028 and 35 percent in 2035. By some accounts progress is slow, but Widener is optimistic.

The city’s website has an extensive section dedicated to trees. You’ll find the Urban Forestry Program, the Climate Action Plan and a list of recommended street trees that includes a few palms and dozens of other species ranging from acacias to silk trees, madrone, redbud, laurel and ironwood.

While Widener feels strongly about moving away from palms as street trees, he is mindful of their iconic presence and emotional resonance.

“We have a lot of palm trees along our coastal communities such as Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla. We do have a few neighborhoods, too, that are known for their palm trees, such as Kensington, where there are hundreds of queen palms that dot the right of way. Occasionally we have to remove trees for health or public safety. We try to promote replanting with shade trees.” One reason palms and other trees that are removed do not get replaced is that residents must agree to maintain new trees for the first three years.

San Diego’s redeveloping downtown waterfront provides one example of keeping the palm spirit alive.

At the foot of Broadway, and along Harbor Drive headed north, Mexican fan palms were initially specified as part of the new plan. The city opted for date palms. They don’t have the same visual impact, but they are more practical. A fringe benefit, according to landscape architect Andrew Spurlock, who has consulted on countless urban plans, is that date palms set a better example than Mexican fan palms for San Diego gardeners who feel compelled to plant palms.

For corporate America, palms create a timeless theme park atmosphere conducive to comfort and spending. Companies such as International Treescapes in Carlsbad serve these markets with “preserved palms” — real palm fronds, embalmed, atop artificial trunks. You can see three of their queen palms in the atrium at The Shoppes at Carlsbad mall, and several more near the baggage carousels inside Terminal 1 at San Diego International Airport.

One can imagine a day not too far in the future when live palm street trees will be historical artifacts like Queen Anne Victorians, California bungalows or Balboa Park’s Spanish Colonial structures. They will be rare and found only in select locations. As with important architecture, neighborhoods can apply for “preservation” status for their trees, but the city has only designated 400 and none are palms.

For me, living breathing palms are essential as visual landmarks and emotional touchstones. Maybe I am maladjusted, but they provide some sort of joy that I don’t get from other trees.

The city should consider taking the initiative to designate public palm zones for preservation. Good governance calls for recognizing what San Diegans love about life here, and the business and marketing value of our palm trees is unquestionable. Where palms must be removed, they should he replaced with palms. As elements within the context of urban infrastructure, this is not as impractical as one might think.

According to Gregg Opgenorth, a palm expert at Grubb & Nadler nursery in Fallbrook, new queen palms cost around $60 per foot, or $1,800 for a 30-foot street tree, which seems a small price to pay for these San Diego icons. As renowned San Diego artist Robert Irwin observed a few years back, a row or cluster of mature palms costs a lot less than most public art.

Sutro writes about architecture and design. He is the author of the guidebook “San Diego Architecture” as well as “University of California San Diego: An Architectural Guide.” He wrote a column about architecture for the San Diego edition of the Los Angeles Times and has covered architecture for a variety of design publications.