Roadside Trees of Southern California 



George T. Hastings 



Whenever one visits a different part of the country, among 

 the interesting things to be seen are the new kinds of trees. 

 Buildings are much the same in all parts of the country, but trees 

 differ north and south, east and west. A visitor from the east 

 to Southern California is probably impressed most by the 

 palms that give a tropical aspect, but most of the other trees 

 seen — acacias, eucalypti, pepper — are not hardy in the north 

 and so, strange. Rarely one greets as friends from home silver 

 maples, box elders, English elms, London planes or cotton- 

 woods. 



Of cone-bearing trees the most notable are the Deodars, 

 slender pyramidal, wide-spreading at base, the branches grace- 

 fully drooping. They are frequently used as lawn trees and some- 

 times to border roads. Probably the best known road in Cali- 

 fornia as far as trees go, is the "Mile of Deodars" or, "Christ- 

 mas Tree Lane" in Altadena. At Christmas time when these 

 trees are covered with colored lights, thousands of cars, their 

 lights turned off, coast down this road nightly. Cedrus deodar is 

 a native of the Himalayas. The closely related Atlas and Leba- 

 non Cedars with shorter leaves and stiffer branches are less 

 commonly grown. Pines are not common as street trees, but 

 the Torrey Pine, Pinus torreyana, named for our own Dr. John 

 Torrey, the 8 to 10 inch needles in fives, the Canary Is- 

 land Pine with needles 9 to 12 inches long in threes and the 

 Monterey Pine with needles half as long and in threes, are some- 

 times seen. The Beefwood or Horsetail tree, Casuarina equiseti- 

 folia, something like a pine in general appearance, has branch- 

 lets with the whorls of tiny appressed leaves looking so much 

 like an equisetum that the specific name seems almost inevi- 

 table. It bears little cone-like fruits less than an inch long. It is 

 a native of Australia and belongs with the dicotyledons. 



A number of palms are grown in California but only four or 

 five species are commonly planted along the streets. Most com- 

 mon and truly Californian are the two species of Washingtonia, 

 W.filifera, with thick trunks up to three feet in diameter, with 

 many thread-like filaments hanging from the broad palmate 

 leaves, and W. robusta, with more slender trunks — in spite of 



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