FLORA OF THE VALLEY : WASHINGTON PALM

Typical picture postcards of Southern California scenes feature streets and highways lined with tall, graceful palms with fan-shaped leaves.

This depiction is inviting to Easterners. But the stately, elegant trees are so numerous here that residents often take them for granted.

There are 2,800 species worldwide but only one is a native of the western United States. The California fan palm (Washingtonia filiferia) , named in honor of the nation’s first president, is conspicuous along Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs and at Joshua Tree National Monument. But it can be seen throughout the region--in parks, yards, canyons, mountains and the desert.

Pictured is a young Washingtonia palm in Woodley Park, Van Nuys.

California’s palm reaches heights of up to 60 feet. It has an unbranched trunk two to three feet in diameter, with horizontal lines and vertical fissures.

The fan-shaped leaves are large and numerous and are split into many narrow, folded segments that have edges frayed into many threadlike fibers. Stalks of the leaves reach lengths of up to five feet and have hooked spines along their edges. In mature trees, leaves are clustered at the palm’s top. If not cut, dead leaves droop against the trunk, forming a thick thatch.

Inspired by the tree’s elegant symbolism on the television show “Miami Vice,” Northern California landscape architects say their clients, who shunned the palms during the 1960s and 1970s as too glitzy, want “that Southern California flair.” Rows of palms recently were planted in downtown San Jose, and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has set aside land for a palm garden.