Election Section

You can see one from almost any spot with almost any view, but there aren’t many palms in the usual street tree spots in Berkeley. The few that you do see in the curb strips were probably guerilla trees, planted privately without a by-your-leave. They can safely be grandfathered in, most of the time. One notable exception is where they’re under powerlines. You can’t prune a palm around powerlines because, except for taking off leaves, you can’t prune a palm at all.  

They’re single-minded as any plant can be: Most palms grow one trunk and have one growing point—at or near the top. If you cut that off, they don’t have a hormone rush the way other trees do, forcing dormant buds below the top to sprout new branches. They just die. (There are a few palm species that can grow multiple trunks, but even these don’t branch; they all grow from the same base.) They’re not built like other trees in other ways, besides this: They don’t have bark like other trees’, and they don’t have distinct zones of heartwood and sapwood. Instead, their xylem and phloem tubes are scattered throughout the fibrous tissue of their trunks. They’re trees only by courtesy. Anatomically and taxonomically, they’re monocots, like lilies.  

The fibrous trunk makes them flexible and resistant to wind, as a rule, which is why you see those tropical palms in idyllic beach scenes, each with a graceful curve at its base. It’s a good idea for species that live on beaches to be able to survive serious wind. They’re tough in various other ways, including hardiness; some specimens are grown in inland Canada. 

They’re also easy to transplant because they can do well with a very small rootball, sending out new roots straight from the trunk. Landscapers like that, because it means they can plant a big tree in a relatively small space, and not have to wait years for it to reach “design height.” If you happen to have a palm that needs to go, don’t just whack it down; call around to local palm nurseries and ask if anyone’s interested in buying and removing it.  

One drawback to palms, as regards design, is that as soon as they get to mature size, they become something better viewed from afar. From across the yard or down the street, they look exotic; from up close, they look like telephone poles. Don’t go planting ivy at the base to compensate, because in no time you’ll have a fine freeway for vermin, leading under shelter of the vines to a secure hideaway in the thatch above. Ugh.  

Most of the palms in Berkeley are one of three species: California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera; Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta (those have fan-shaped leaves); or Canary Island date palm, Phoenix canariensis (feather-shaped leaves, a trunk strongly marked with leaf scars, and little unpalatable orange fruit in big conspicuous clusters in season). There are a few queen palms and windmill palms around, too, aside from rarer species in tropical collections. Hooded orioles like to nest in the thatch of fan palms, and other birds use fibers from the leaves for nesting material. I’ve watched a towhee determinedly zipping long cords from leaf edges, flying off, returning and repeating for hours. 

There’s a coquito palm, or Chilean wine palm, on the UC campus, too. It bears edible coconuts, the only one that does so in our climate. They’re small, the size of a big olive, and don’t produce coconut milk, but they taste like the real thing. I suspect the squirrels get the nuts on campus before we can. The tree has a smooth gray trunk and fan leaves. If you find it, do look at the ground below for missed nuts. You’ll need a hammer to break them. 

In rainy gray midwinter, even native palms evoke inviting warmer climes. That’s not why some of San Francisco’s feral/wild parrots nest in them, though; they can easily make holes in the relatively soft trunks. Check it out at the Act 1 & 2 theaters on Feb. 11, in Judy Irving’s engaging film The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.