Los Angeles city tree care

[M.D. Vaden]

A few days ago, I drove our daughter to Oceanside, California - her husband was tranferred to Camp Pendleton, for the Marine Corp. Anyhow, I had a chance to drive around Los Angeles and Oceanside to see trees and check out some tree care.

Certainly, the city is going to have some "basket-case" areas I didn't see, but the areas I looked at seemed very nice. It looks like arboriculture is solidly anchored in that area. 1/2 the trees, I didn't even recognize, but the arboriculture and pruning practices were recognizeable. Two aspects stood out:

1. Arboriculture - good arboriculture - is more prolific, than in the Portland, Oregon, area that I'm accustomed too. Basically, more established looking.

2. The arboriculture performed in Los Angeles, though more prolific, is not quite at the caliber of that in the Pacific Northwest.

That's in general. What clued-me-in on that, is that a lot of big forest type conifers there are being pruned like they were "Yukes" - almost with a style superceding what they need.

A lot of the tree pruning is just on the verge of Lion-tailing, but not quite there.

But it's a tough thing to judge for certain, without being there in-person for a few seasons. I'd imagine that several local factors and the species dictate much of the pruning style and needs there.

All I can say, is that my general first-impression and second-impression were very favorable. It was nice to drive though L.A. and be able to enjoy and compliment so many pruning cuts and trees (as opposed to Medford, Oregon which shocked me initially).

One other thing that really caught my eye was the lack of sunburn on the sunset side of trees there. That may have a lot to do with how trees are grown in the nusery. I'm not sure how much trunk protection happens at planting time. Either way, poor pruning can cause sunburn, and I was hard-pressed to find sunburn damage on the trees there. In a nutshell, I felt very good about what I saw in "L.A", and it would be tempting to want to move there to do arborist / tree work. It looks like a great city to be an arborist in. I may have a ton of Los Angeles tree questions. I have a suspicion that Australians may know a lot of the trees there.

 

[NickfromWI]

WOW! We passed!!!

I live here in LA, and I am constantly disappointed by what I see done to the trees, both by the Urban Forestry Division and by private contractors. Topping is prolific here, and occasionally carried out on street trees and often carried out in private properties.

You're right though, it's not THAT bad.

Where'd you go in LA?

If you wanna see a city with perfect trees, check Salt Lake City!!!

love
nick

 

[M.D. Vaden]

WOW! We passed!!!

I live here in LA, and I am constantly disappointed by what I see done to the trees, both by the Urban Forestry Division and by private contractors. Topping is prolific here, and occasionally carried out on street trees and often carried out in private properties.

You're right though, it's not THAT bad.

Where'd you go in LA?

If you wanna see a city with perfect trees, check Salt Lake City!!!

love
nick

I suspected that some topping had occured in the past. I could see where the cuts would have occured, but wasn't sure if it may have been due to a weather extreme.

Mainly near the main drag I - 5 (and various nearby L.A. streets) corridor, Santa Anna, Anaheim, Pasadena. Basically, I was just on the move, just flowing along, watching the compass in the car, and crossing the town while looking at a lot of stuff. On the next day, the train cut through a ton of neighborhoods, and I could see stuff close-up and at a distance. Really got a huge sampling in a short amount of time.

Not tree related, but one photo I should have taken, and didn't, was the other side of the mountain from L.A. where the big Petro station is located, before heading up into the hills. It was really cool looking. I got something similar on the way back, but only half as good.

One surprise, was how well traffic moved along the main freeway at 11am in the morning. Probably better than Portland. And Portland is much smaller. You will never see traffic moving at 85 miles an hour in Portland on any day, or at any time. Maybe a single car, but not entire lanes of traffic.

This one tree, I was told, is a fig (now, its way up the coast, not L.A. - maybe an hour or two). Ever seen it? I was told it was like the biggest of its kind on the west coast. Hard to get a good image in the dense shade, even on the sunny day.

I was wondering if it was like in the "fig family" - different than any fig I've seen in our neck of the woods. Leaves almost looked magnolia-like from a distance. The butress roots are magnificent - dwarfing me in the image.

 

[NickfromWI]

Yep, that's a member of the fig fam. Maybe Ficus elastica or maybe Ficus macrophylla or something like that. I'm still learnin' my fici!

love
nick

 

[treesandsurf]

Looks like a large Ficus elastica. When you live in an area you have a much better understanding of what is really going on in the tree world. I initially thought trees were pretty well taken care of in Hawaii... that lasted maybe a week until the real story started to appear. You want to see arboriculture in a very sad state, visit the Hawaiian islands (at least Oahu).

jp

 

[BonsaiJedi]

MD - I had a similar tree in San Diego earlier this year...I thought to myself, "wow, I've never seen aerial roots on a magnolia before" then it dawned on me that is was in fact a rubber tree ( F. elastica). Slightly larger than the house plant version in my apartment! Pretty impressive root flares!

On the subject of poor arboriculture: I was under the impression that CA would be an Eden of tree care as the Cali people are generally regarded as being more "green" than the rest of the country. I was shocked when I first started working out there how lousy much of the tree care was. I was in a hotel in L.A. and counted 13 companies on two pages of Yellow Pages ads that advertised 'topping' as a service...a practice that has been shamed out of the industry here in MN for a while. Certainly there are good companies doing very good work there (all the ones here on AS for sure!! ) but over all the trees were in worse shape than I had expected. Is this consitent with you Cali tree guys see?


I was just in Corvallis, OR for the ISA show was overall pretty impressed with the tree care there. HUGE specimens on the OSU campus that we pretty sweet. Biggest red oak I've ever seen!!!

 

[ArtB]

Recognized the fig tree right off as being the one in Santa Barbara, right off hwy 1.

Looks almost the same as the last time I saw it probably 15 years ago. Was surprised then it was doing so well right next to the freeway.