Trees

La Mesa Drive in Santa Monica, LA is an unusual tourist attraction. A quiet residential street, about a kilometre in length from start to finish, La Mesa Drive is lined with Moreton Bay Fig trees, 60 down each side. And I don’t mean saplings, these specimens were planted in the late nineteenth century.

The story goes that the plan was to plant Magnolia trees. In the day LA was mostly open plains and shade trees were a desirable feature. At a young age Moreton Bay Figs and Magnolia saplings share some similarities to look at, and somehow they became mixed. The trees were identified officially as Magnolia trees as late as 1936.

The original trees were shipped from Australia in the 1870’s and were literally given away to anybody who turned up at the dock and asked for them. Surprisingly for a rain forest climate type of tree they thrived in the drier climes of LA. They show up quite regularly when you’re roaming around LA, and this post was inspired by the news that one of the 4 144 year old Moreton Bay Fig trees at the historical founding site of ‘El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles’ had expired. This historical site is right out the front entrance of Union Station and was the very first place I visited in the USA.

Californians also imported millions of eucalypts beginning in the 1850’s, mostly blue gums, but they don’t remember this species anywhere near as fondly as they do the magnificent Ficus. Eucalypts where a bit of a con job from Australia’s end. ‘Fast Growing’, definitely. ‘Look at these railway sleepers made from eucalypt’. A very big reason for interest in eucalypts, railway companies managed plantations of trees for the ongoing expansion of their tracks and the need to periodically replace each sleeper. The sleepers exhibited were beautiful, filled every specification, couldn’t be better. Problem was they were made with centuries old virgin forest timber and this was not the product you get with 15-20 year old plantation trees. Supposedly it’s pretty useless until it’s a century or more old.

And it burns, in October 1991, the Oakland firestorm killed 25, injured 150, destroyed 2800+ single house dwellings and 430+ apartments. Why do I mention this? To this day eucalypts are one of the most prolific wild seeding plants in this landscape.