see also: Areca Palm, Date Palm Tree

The Washingtonia Robusta is a skyscraper palm. It is an icon of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards in Los Angeles. Mexican palms symbolize this wonderful city. Everybody who comes to LA wants to see its symbol. There are about 75000 of them in Los Angeles. They create a striking accent along streets and drives, tower over all buildings and trees, sway gently in the wind and look amazing from distance.

They are very tall. These palms can reach a height of 100 feet. In Los Angeles they are even taller.

Mexican palms have long life expectancy: about 100 years. In LA about 80% of these palms are near their life expectancy.

Unfortunately, the city of Los Angeles replaces them with oaks, sycamores and crape myrtles. Mexican Palms are very expensive to maintain for the city. The fronds tend to fall and manually trimming off the fronds cost a lot of money. The cleaning up the old dead fronds is necessary due to the fire hazard.

Also these palms don’t provide the same benefits as the other leafty trees. They cast no shade, and are not the best air filters compare to other species.

Mexican fan palms have a problem with fungal disease. The city doesn’t know how to stop the fungus. Now not all Washingtonia robustas are infected, but the disease in the soil, and the new palms start to get sick.

I hope that Los Angeles city will find way to plant sycamores, oaks and other leafty native species to provide shade and release oxygen to the air, but also remain the iconic palms the main symbol of the city.

The website www.mexicanfanpalm.net include the following articles: