Palm Everlasting

How a tree became a WESTERN ICON—and why it’s ready for a MAKEOVER.

- Sharon Cohoon

GRAY WINTER SKIES APPROACH, DAYDREAMS HAVE A WAY OF TURNING TO THE TROPICS— PERHAPS AN ISLAND GETAWAY WHERE A HAMMOCK AWAITS BENEATH A SOARING COCONUT TREE. RUSTLING FRONDS, A CREAKING TRUNK, AND JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF SHADE INVITE A NAP.

Yet there’s more to the palm than its starring role in vacation fantasies. Indigenous tribes used the West’s only native species, the California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera), as a resource for food, shelter, and tools. In-the-know desert travelers also recognized that spotting W. filifera usually meant that you had found water—they often grow near creeks and springs.

But with roughly 2,400 palm species found worldwide, it was only a matter of time before W. filifera was joined by near and distant relatives—especially as the climbers were wielded to draw people westward. In the 18th century, Franciscan missionaries brought Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) to California for their biblical associations. A century later, the Southern Pacific Railroad used them to pitch semi-arid Los Angeles as a lush paradise for would-be vacationers and real estate investors. The film industry followed suit, too, starting in the early 1900s, lining their studios with palms as a way to represent exotic and faraway lands. Stars like Rudolph Valentino were photographed beneath them, thus ushering in a period where these dramatic, handsome trees became synonymous with glitz and glamour.

Perhaps most ambitious of all, in 1931 the City of Los Angeles planted an astonishing 25,000 Mexican fan palms (Washingtonia robusta) along 150 miles of boulevards. The goal was to put unemployed Depression-era men back to work and to beautify the city before the 1932 Summer Olympics. Today, some of those same skydusters tower 100 feet overhead and have become a signature feature of L.A.’s beaches and streets, emblazoned on T-shirts and postcards.