CHAPTER XXIII. 

 GARDEN PALMS FOR CALIFORNIA. 



Palms should receive wider and more discriminating attention from 

 Californians. It is true that we are planting a good many, but we are 

 not using them in a way befitting their great beauty and their great 

 variety in size and form. We are fortunate in possessing a climate in 

 which very many palms are perfectly hardy and in that respect Cali- 

 fornia differs from other regions in our own latitude in the United 

 States. We are able, then, to give our landscape striking features 

 which we can ourselves continually enjoy and which will appeal 

 strongly to the visitors who come to us from the more northerly 

 countries. California should become, in all save the higher altitudes, 

 distinguishable as a land of palms. 



But for this reason, amateurs should not rush into planting palms 

 without forethought and calculation. It requires ample resources of 

 land and money to indulge in palm collections, for, aside from a few 

 which are largely used, the plants require considerable outlay. Be- 

 sides, one is apt to place the small plants so near together that they 

 grow into crowding each other and afford no perspective views of their 

 beautiful forms and attitudes. Again, indulgence in palm collections 

 should never be entered upon without knowledge of the local tem- 

 perature records and a study of the limits of different palm species. 

 A few of them will endure any temperature which has visited Cali- 

 fornia valleys, even to fifteen degrees below freezing perhaps, others 

 resent frost like a lemon tree. Therefore one should have a reasonable 

 enthusiasm over palm planting. 



What California Can Do with Palms. We measure our palm possi- 

 bilities by what has already been accomplished in places which have 

 been properly selected. On page 9 is a statement by Dr. Franceschi 

 which credits the Santa Barbara region with successfully growing in 

 the open air not less than one hundred and fifty species of palms. Mr. 

 Thomas Compton gives further details concerning the growing of 

 palms in the Montecito Valley: 



"The palm is the grandest and most striking feature of the whole 

 vegetable kingdom. Palms range in height from one or two feet to one 

 hundred feet and can be used for the ornamentation of avenues, 

 grouping for landscape effects, or as single specimens. In the Phoenix 

 palms we have between twenty and thirty different species and almost 

 as many shades of foliage. About twenty-five species of Cocos have 

 been tried and successfully grown. They range in height from six to 

 ten feet. Some are very striking objects; all are graceful and should 

 be more extensively used than at present. The australis type of the 



