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TH: Re: Palm Trees



 Post-To: Tree-House@Majordomo.Flora.Com (Community Forestry) ----------
 -------
 On Fri, 23 May 1997, RT Ellsberry wrote: ------------------------------

>  Palm Trees:
> 
>  In Baltimore it is becoming more & more fashionable for big night-
>  clubs to plant Palms around their patios in the summer, which
>  unfortunately are *not* winter hardy here.  The April 28 issue of
>  'Newsweek' magazine reports that in Las Vegas (where they *are*
>  hardy), the market for Canary Island Palms has inflated 130% in
>  the past couple years, to where major casinos are paying $8,000.oo
>  apiece for these trees, and that landscaping routinely calls for
>  200 of them!  This is an interesting, if disturbing new development.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Hello Friends of the Forest -

 After I wrote the above item it occurred to me that Canary Island
 Palms (if I have that right) might not be hardy in Las Vegas after
 all ! We have semi-tropical palms growing in the glass observatory at
 Druid Hill Park (The Zoo), as well as inside The Gallery mall at the
 inner harbor -- which does not make these trees hardy in Baltimore.

 In Las Vegas, so many tons of water per second are pumped into that
 town from elsewhere that much of their flora is probably neither
 native nor hardy there.  I'm not trying to bash Las Vegas, but it's
 a sobering realization to think about our 'artificial life support
 systems' for domestic plants -- especially on such a massive scale.

 This gets back to the discussions on flooding our lawns with selective
 fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, hormones and who-knows-what,
 all in compliance with ordinary landscaping expectations.

 And while I'm ranting ... I would again like for us to exempt the
 great public arboreta, gardens and research centers from this go-
 native argument.  We all benefit immeasurably from their work.

 There are a lot of similar issues between the handling of exotic
 plants and of exotic animals.  Large cities should have zoos, but
 discourage the keeping of parrots and primates as pets in the home.

 Likewise, more public palmhouses, arboreta and botanical gardens
 would be great for all of us, but lets not line our streets with
 trees that require altering the climate in order to keep them alive.

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 For Tree-House - 'We Rant. We Plant' ...

 --------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------
 Richard Tryzno Ellsberry  |   Flora's Garden   |  Baltimore USDA Zone 7
 --------------------------+-(http://Flora.Com)-+-----------------------


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