roadside flora
We’ve just returned from a couple of days in L.A. The drive up and back isn’t one of the great scenic routes on earth, and for the most part it’s not particularly interesting botanically.
The plantings of trees along I-5 and the 405 over 150 miles mostly draw from tried and true California plant staples like palms and eucalyptus, with stands of Italian cypress and occasional pines concentrated in the more residential areas. They’re attractive enough and generally drought-tolerant choices, but the rhythm of palm, palm, eucalyptus, palm, cypress, palm, eucalyptus, palm gets a little repetitious over the course of two and a half hours (if traffic is moving).
A new kind of tree has been appearing over the last half dozen years, however. With the recent growth of cell phones, there’s been an explosion in how many cell towers you see—More bars in more places translates into more cell towers in more places. The providers have occasionally tried to hide the towers by trying to make them pass as trees—usually with pretty comical results.
To keep myself amused on the trip I shot a few photos of roadside trees. See if you can spot the cell towers in the grid below. (Answers are at the end of this post, but I don’t think you’ll need the answer key.)
Trees and cell towers
Give up? The cell towers are the far right in the top row (fake palm), the first in the third row (fake…er…what is that supposed to be? a redwood? roadside in Southern California?) and far right in the third row (plain vanilla cell tower). At least the cell tower trees are drought-tolerant.
August 25 2008 | Categories: landscape design • places | Tags: cell phones • cell towers • drought-tolerant landscaping • Interstate 405 • Interstate 5 • Los Angeles • Orange County • roadside plantings • trees | 1 Comment »
