Posted on 09/25/2007 5:28:53 AM PDT by Past Your Eyes
Monica Barra went to South Los Angeles last month to attend a jazz festival. She went home with a free tree, a one-gallon African sumac that she lugged around on a Sunday afternoon past the shops and restaurants of Leimert Park.
The college senior took the tree on an impulse, though each tree recipient was required to fill out a "pledge to plant," a form smaller than an index card and a signature feature of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to plant 1 million trees across Los Angeles.
"I just really like having trees and plants where I'm living," said Barra, who majors in literature, historiography and urban studies. "And it was free."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Wonder how many will be mowed over by some non-English speaking lawn maintenance workers hired to cut their lawns for them.
Considering Los Angeles is in the throes of one of the driest years in history can we spare the water? People forget Los Angeles is a desert!
Is the African Sumac even a good tree to plant in the LA basin?
Based on the name, why plant a non-native tree?
Proponents of natural agriculture should have a cow.
Even with the best care, probably 8 out of 10 seedlings will die.
After they've been hauled around in a hot truck for days before they're handed out to the populace, even if they're planted immediately and watered with a drip irrigator, the die off rate will still be 100 percent.
I got a dogwood slip (bare root) from the Home Depot Christmas tree chippers and tried to baby it along. It was a dead tree walking!
And this year has been bad around here . . . I have lost an oakleaf hydrangea and two rhododendrons that I planted in January, simply due to the drought. The county has banned ALL outdoor watering, so they just had to take their chance and they lost. I'm very upset, I don't usually lose plants.
I don’t know anything about “African” sumacs but I never have seen any kind of a sumac that I would deliberately put on my property. It’s just a useless feel-good project for them to crow about.
But at least they all feel good.... (barf)
Now that's funny.
It’s not a bad looking small tree. Since its from So. Africa, I’d guess its good in arid climates.
Our Scout Pack does an annual park cleanup every year at one of the local parks. Sometimes they give the kids a seedling if they want it to take home. When it was over this year, I asked them for all their extras and got about 150 of them. We then took them to my church property, boughts a bunch more Oaks and Maples and the Scouts planted them all as one of their badge requirements.
That was 1 1/2 years ago. The church property is lying fallow as we’re trying to pay it down before we build so I haven’t even been there since. I need to go back and see if any of the trees have grown or if they just became deer food.
What's not to like?
Do you people who are complaining about this hate Lady Bird Johnson, too?
Does anyone have an idea how much more water it would take a year to irrigate 1 million new street trees?
Do you hate George Bush?
What's the point in spending money on something that isn't going to work? At least Lady Bird's flowers grew!
Around here, trees grow faster than we can cut them. There’s more woods here now than when the Pilgrims landed.
The situation is effectively unsustainably "sustainable."
Speaking of trees, it annoys me (and ALL governments and companies do this) when you see all these cute young trees planted...and by mid summer they’re DEAD because-gasp-new trees require more WATER than established trees do!!
No municipality, county, or corporate landscaper seems to realize this, therefore they spend 4 times as much money re-planting new trees each year until finally a wet summer allows them to take root even though neglected.
They did this a few years back. They planted trees all over the place but no one watered them. All along the streets there were dead twigs sticking up.
That even happens here. Trees always need more water when just planted than they do later on. You see cities and companies re-plant three, four years in a row.
Would be cheaper to just water them for the first year or two in the ground.
Hmmm...I live in Cal, and have probably planted 15 trees in the past 20 or so years, and only lost one.
Is the African Sumac even a good tree to plant in the LA basin?”
Unless there are various types of Sumac, I have always been told it is poisonous to horses, cattle, etc. Only in Los Angeles would these nimrods spend this kind of money on this kind of debacle.
If you were planting trees you bought from a nursery, you probably had 1 or 3-gallon in-pot plants -- bare-root is very difficult in warm climates like GA or CA. Those have a much better survival rate than young seedlings, because they're already through the awkward age.
I'm not a pro or even a heavy-duty amateur, but a friend of mine is a serious rhododendron hobbyist and grows his own from seed. He always has high losses in the seedling stage, from damping off, thinning, etc. If you were able to get 14 out of 15 seedling trees to live, my hat's off to you.
Idiots didn't water the trees. MOST of them survived long enough for the Olympics to be over . . . but not all . . . and lots died afterwards. It was so sad to see all those spiky bare branches all along the streets . . . .
We plant or buy those that are about 5 gallon containers. They seem to do pretty good, and we always purchase drought resistant plants and trees.
The sumac we have here is a pernicious weed. There is Staghorn and Smooth sumac. It grows and spreads and it puts out a poison that keeps anything else from coming up through it. There is such a thing as Poison Sumac but I have never seen it to my knowledge. That would be poison as in poison ivy or poison oad.
Deer eat sumac all the time so I doubt if it is poisonous to them.
I plant native trees only, except for the Yoshino cherries which I just adore -- they do really well here (one I planted 2 years ago was a mass of blooms this spring). We are not normally a drought area (although we're having what looks like a 100-year drought this year) and we live in a very wet creek valley, so I normally plant moisture-loving trees on our downhill side and forest hardwoods on our uphill side.
We're probably going to sell this house in a couple of years, when my son gets out of high school, so I'm scaling back on the planting now until we find a new place.
It's recommended as a desert plant because it doesn't need much water and it's very hard to kill, but it's a rather messy tree and the female trees drop berries everywhere, which sprout and give you lots of LITTLE African sumacs.
Unless you have a really dry situation, it doesn't sound like such a good idea to me. Of course in our normal climate around here we get a good deal of rain, and a tree like that would take over the yard . . . .
African Sumac Tree
Rhus lancea, Cashew Family: ( Anacardiaceae ), African Sumac Tree. Also called: .
The African sumac is a small, slow growing, evergreen tree from South Africa with long slender leaves and multiple trunks. Has spreading habit with weeping branches. It is dioecious, only the female trees carry the fruits.
It goes by the name Karee. Many tiny green flowers are borne in many- flowered panicles and they lack showy petals. Pollination is affected mostly by the wind, much to the chagrin of allergy sufferers. A sweet perfume is released into the air by these flowers.
Some people may develop dermatitis upon contact with the skin. Even the pollen may harm some people.
These trees produce viable seed and volunteers can often be found growing in hedgerows and in desert washes near urban environments. Potentially this could allow African Sumac to become another unwanted exotic invasive in native Sonoran Desert habitat.
The fruit is edible, and has been used to make a beer.
Sensitive to Texas root rot.
Moderate maintance with seed and flower drop on the female trees. Constant removal of basal suckers. Yearly thinning required.
Height: To 24 feet. Spread may reach 24+ feet.
Flowers: 6 inch long panicles (clusters) of inconspicuous Whitish - green flowers in sprays.
Flowering Time: Mid January - February.
Leaves: Hairless, palmately compound, shiny, dark green, leaves with three lance-shaped leaflets, 2 to 4 inches long .
Bark: Gray to light brown furrowed into narrow, firm ridges and darkens with age. Showing orange underlayer.
Fruit: Covered with a thin glossy brownish layer when ripe. Inside is a black seed..
Found: Native of Southern Africa. Now found in tropical and subtropical parts of the world, including USA.
Elevation: 850 to 1,600 Feet.
Habitat: Landscaping.
If the sumbitch is sensitive to Texas root rot... 
get the Roundup out and kill it!
Don't ya.... 
just love LA?
I brought home some seeds I found at the ruins of Copan, Honduras a few years ago. This past May or June I put one of the seeds in a plastic container of dirt and set it out on my deck. It sat out there totally neglected for about 2 months with no results so I brought the dried out container back into my garage and set it on my workbench with every intention of throwing it in the garbage.
I guess it sat out there for a couple weeks until a week ago when I noticed that it had sprouted and grown about 2 inches. Cool!
I then transplanted it into a pot and put it in my garden window in my kitchen and it's now about 4 inches high and sprouting leaves.
I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned here but I'll be darned if I can think of one.
How about "No Seed Left Behind"?
Be prepared for some extended dry weather. La Nina is back. The national weather service is calling for a colder, snowier winter in the northwest. Fine by me. I have my wood cut and ready. Southern California and the southwest and likely to be drier than normal.
Hard to be much drier than last year.
Hope you don’t turn out to be the source of this generation’s equivalent of kudzu . . . . do you know what the seed is?
The tree is a dangerous alien species and might really damage the ecology of the LA basin.
Hard to believe that people are still bringing in all these exotics when we have had some very bad experience with invasives. Sounds like this critter could be the next Ailanthus or Zebra mussel.
Its a tree but I haven't been able to identify it on the internet. The seed was in a small pod and the seed pod resembled a very small horse chestnut only brown and white in color.
If it continues to grow it will have to remain in the house since it obviously wouldn't survive our extreme temps here in Michigan.
We Southerners are sensitive to the issue of escapes, on account of stuff like this:
“Some people may develop dermatitis upon contact with the skin. Even the pollen may harm some people.”
This doesn’t sound like a good tree to plant close to people. In fact, it sounds like poison sumac.
Thats that kudzu stuff isn't it? As much as I hate weeds, I'd probably go nuts trying to eradicate if off my property....
It dies back in winter, but the roots survive and it springs into action again.
You would have quite a time eradicating it . . . I speak from personal experience because where we used to live the City of Atlanta did NOT maintain an abandoned right of way that was overgrown with the stuff. I kept having to beat it back off our land. The roots are enormous, fleshy tubers that grow as big as a man's body, and a backhoe would be very helpful in digging them out. Roundup is mostly ineffective.
The only real solution is to acquire some goats and stake them out along the edge of the advancing kudzu. Since they keep it eaten close, the roots eventually die.
Before.
After.
Then I say, "Plant them million sumbitches all up in San Fransico around Nancy Pelosi's house!"
I’m gonna whip up some great goat curry today!!
Yea, but this initiative was started by Tony Villar, the current mayor of Los Angeles. Tony Villar changed his name to Antonio Villaragosa, to sound more Mexcian, I presume. This guy is another Bill Clinton, with half the brain power.
He is a former MECHA member and fancies himself the next governor of California. Thus, everything he does is either a photo op or something that can become a photo op.
"It isn't etiquette to cut any one you've been introduced to. Remove the joint."
A better movement would be do dig up concrete and other paved areas to allow runoff to seap into the aquifier....
Burbank has more trees per capita than people, and they keep raising water rates to pay for watering them
The problem is that LA is a damned desert. All of the water used there is diverted from Northern California or the Colorado River. Planting another tree there is not being kind to Mother Nature.
Carolyn
It’s ridiculous. It would cost so much less to just water the poor things.
Where are you located?
We’re starting to see a little of that in Maryland and even Southeastern PA.
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