California Street Trees 



RALPH D. COKNELL 

 POMONA COLLEGE 



Street trees have furnished the topic of much discussion in California 

 where we never lose an opportunity to expound the subject. They form, as 

 it were, a bone of contention which we can ever gnaw and pick and which 

 seems never to lose the savor that bones of contention are wont to hold. 

 The daily papers continually confront us with appeals for more street trees; 

 we read about their charm and beauty in the Sunday magazine sections; we 

 are enlightened as to their desirability and aid in the healtlifulness of a 

 community, in all the farm and horticultural periodicals of the state; and 

 then we go to the meetings of the various horticultural societies and civic 

 leagues to learn why we should plant more street trees. We revel in the lore 

 and fondly picture our home city as it will be a generation, or even fewer 

 years hence, when it shall have become a veritable bower of verdure thru 

 our far sighted planting and tender care of its street trees. It has ever been so. 



Every home plants trees in front of its sidewalk. Every small town fills 

 its street parkways with trees concerning which it passes many laws and 

 goes to much expense. They are rather costly to buy; re(|uire considerable 

 labor for proper planting; must be nurtured during their youth, lest they 

 die of thirst and neglect; must be pruned, as all young things, to influence 

 their direction of growth and curb their natural desires that seem misdi- 

 rected. But when we have once establislied them, they afford sucli delightful 

 places for the small boy to carve his initials while trying out liis new knife, 

 and make such lovely fodder for the old family horse that chews them between 

 naps that he takes while waiting at the curb, tiiat we immediately consider 

 their removal thinking they serve the community too practicably. But why 

 should it be that no sooner do such civic improvements become established 

 than we decide that they are in the way of future development of our little 

 metropolis and so must give way to sidewalks and stone gutters? Why do 

 we plant such things and cut them down, and still continue to gnaw the bone 

 of contention? 



Now we all appreciate the beauty of street trees, both in the city and the 

 country, enjoying all the while the cool shade that they furnish from the 

 burning rays of our subtropical sun. If we stop to consider, we cannot but 

 remember that they tend to temper the dry heat of our summers by the 

 vast amount of evaporated moisture that they daily transpire from their 

 leaves; that they break the sweep of our trade and storm winds, .stopping 

 and holding the while much of the atmospheric dust ; and that they consume 

 the poisonous carbon dioxide gas, exhaling in its stead pure oxygen. We love 

 their grace and charm as we fondly recall some well planted avenue that 

 remains ever fresh in our memories. But we forget all of this as soon as we 



