Phoenix Canariensis: One Man's Nuisance Is a $20,000 Palm

[question everything]

Suburbanites Are Happy To Be Rid of the 'Pests' Destined for Beverly Hills

By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 11, 2004; Page A1

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Boasting an exceptionally wide trunk lined with diamond patterns and a dense crown of arching fronds, the tree is favored by landscapers for framing boulevards like the one leading up to a new baseball stadium in San Diego. But because the tree grows so slowly, needing decades to reach its full height of 60 feet, very few nurseries even try to grow it. The rare full-grown trees can fetch $20,000.

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To find new trees, Mr. Serrano doesn't cruise through Beverly Hills -- "That's where we sell trees" -- but through suburbs like Camarillo... The owners of the stucco house were delighted to find the note. The palm, which they inherited 12 years ago when they bought their house, "almost collapsed our sewage system," Mr. Trujillo says. Its roots were protruding through the pipes. A plumber's efforts to stop the underground invasion failed. Waste from the kitchen sink was gurgling up from the drain in their bathtub. Mr. Serrano offered the Trujillos $300 for the palm. The tree was a hazard to pedestrians, he told them, because its 24-foot spread of spiky fronds was spilling over the sidewalk. "It can poke someone's eye out," Mr. Serrano told them.

The couple jumped at the offer... "I was relieved to get rid of it," says Mrs. Trujillo, who says she had been planning to pay someone about $1,000 to haul it away. At the nursery, another crew got to work giving the Trujillo tree a makeover. They manually shaved its trunk, shaped a pineapple-like bulb at the top and pruned its fronds before setting it upright for a landscape architect to inspect. "We make it all nice and fancy," says tree salesman Doug Henderson. Within a month, Valley Crest sold the palm for $5,700 to an architect in Northridge.

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Native to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic off northwest Africa, the Phoenix canariensis is believed to have been introduced to California by Spanish mission priests in the 1800s who brought them over as seeds. In the late 1950s, a lot of people planted "these cute little palms that turned into 32,000-pound monsters" in their yards, says Tom Jaszewski, horticulture director at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where there are 650. Apart from its rarity, what makes the Canary Island date palm such a profitable tree is that mammoth projects require dozens of them at once. But nurseries don't plant this type of palm because it grows just six inches a year. Nurseries rely instead on palm spotters to buy them from homeowners.

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Write to Miriam Jordan at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108690570014334423,00.html

[mitchtv]

1. A ride out Dolores Stree in SF

you will see these beauties in all their glory. One of the most beautiful streets in the world .IMHO. They provide small atesto the flocks of feral parrots.