Culver City homeowners are choosing sides in a botanical turf war that began, as these things do, with a very good photo.
CULVER CITY, California (Screw The News) – The Los Angeles jacaranda, a tree that has for generations enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly on being photographed by people who just moved here, held an emotional press conference on a residential sidewalk this week to respond to what its spokesperson called “a hostile takeover by a yellow upstart with a lantern problem.” The upstart is the Chinese flame tree, which LAist recently declared the city’s new fall showstopper, and which the jacaranda community has been treating with the dignity normally reserved for a rival who gets invited to the wedding.
The conflict, as reported in LAist’s guide to the flame tree, centers on a tree that blooms in the fall with yellow flowers that later give way to pink or reddish capsules resembling paper lanterns. The tree is popular in El Sereno, Long Beach and Culver City, and the guide quotes a UC Cooperative Extension horticulture adviser who said that if he could only have one, he would probably pick the flame tree over a jacaranda. Jacaranda partisans took this as a betrayal, and also as a pretty good argument for a ballot measure.
Transcript of the Sidewalk Press Conference
The following exchange was recorded at the corner of two Culver City streets, where a jacaranda stands six feet from a flame tree and the two have not made eye contact in years.
Reporter: Does the jacaranda feel threatened?
Spokesperson Winifred Okonkwo-Hartley, Westside Association for Lavender Continuity: We do not feel threatened. We feel replaced. There is a difference, and it is mostly paperwork.
Reporter: The flame tree is described as an official fall showstopper. What is the jacaranda’s season?
Okonkwo-Hartley: Spring. Spring is when people stand under us, cry and post it. We have a brand. We have an intellectual property. You cannot just go and bloom in the autumn like a person with no sense of timing.
Reporter: Many say the two trees are nearly indistinguishable from one another.
Okonkwo-Hartley: That is false. One is purple and one is yellow. The extension service is talking about two types of flame tree, one from China and one from Taiwan, that look basically the same, and frankly that is the flame tree’s problem, not ours.
A Genus With a Long and Slightly Awkward History
Flame tree defenders point out that their species has been in the country since 1763, according to the extension service, which gives it a seniority advantage over most of the people who now live beneath it. The genus arrived most likely by way of an arboretum or botanical garden before entering the nursery trade, a path that Los Angeles residents recognize as the horticultural equivalent of arriving as a guest and staying for the sublet.
“This tree has been here longer than the Dodgers, the freeway and the idea of a green juice,” said Percival Nwosu-Lindgren, a stand-up comic and part-time arborist from Long Beach who has been telling the same joke about this at open mics since the leaves started to change. “And it still can’t get a table at brunch.”
The flame tree’s reputation is not untarnished. The guide notes that the trees aren’t drought-tolerant exactly, though they are not water hogs either, and that their seeds sprout easily wherever they reach a water source, so seedlings may need to be pulled before they get big. Culver City residents say this describes a tree with many of the traits of a houseguest who finds the spare key.
The Numbers Behind the Rivalry
The Westside Association for Lavender Continuity has released the following figures, compiled from a survey of 400 homeowners across four neighborhoods:
- 47 percent of respondents say they are “firmly jacaranda,” 38 percent say they are “quietly flame tree” and 15 percent say they have just realized they had a tree.
- One in three said they would not date a person who planted the wrong species in the front yard.
- Real estate agents report that a listing described as “mature flame tree” commands a premium of roughly one open house, plus a sign about the bees.
- Eleven percent of those polled said they would be willing to trade their tree for a parking space, which the association calls “the only honest answer in the survey.”
Autumn Becomes an Economy
The sudden fame of the flame tree has not gone unnoticed by the commercial sector. Several Southland landscapers have begun offering weekend viewing packages, which residents say echoes the rural practice of charging a premium to experience something already on one’s own property. On the farm side, the harvest-season version of this is already established: farm.fm has reported on a pumpkin patch that added a $75 VIP experience in which visitors carry their own pumpkin, a business model that Culver City homeowners say they are preparing to adopt for any guest standing under their canopy.
Weather may also enter the picture. LAist has been following the arrival of an El Nino winter, and its coverage of the El Nino season has prompted residents to wonder what a rainy winter will do to the seedlings, which tend to pop up wherever water shows up. “We’ve heard every worry about El Nino, flooding, mudslides, you name it,” said Okonkwo-Hartley. “Nobody is asking about the seedlings. It’s a conspiracy of the lantern people.”
For its part, the flame tree has made no public statement and is believed to be enjoying itself. Residents who wish to follow the dispute can find an ongoing archive of neighborhood grievances at Bohiney.com, where the opinions are as strong as the root systems and nobody has ever pulled a permit for either. Meanwhile the association says it will be back in the spring, wearing purple, and not speaking to anyone.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/