Fear of a Fall Spells a Springtime End for Six Downtown Trees

Five silk floss trees, which for 42 years have graced Spring Street outside Caltrans’ downtown Los Angeles headquarters, were chain-sawed into sawdust Saturday by a crew of state transportation workers.

A sixth, a 50-footer, is destined to become mulch next weekend.

The trees weren’t diseased. They didn’t tangle with power lines. And, in the words of the man who oversaw their demise, “They’re actually quite beautiful.”

They were cut down because state officials feared lawsuits might spring from pedestrians who have slipped on the trees’ vivid-colored blooms. There was also concern about liability in the event someone tripped on the sidewalk buckled by the roots of the Chorisia-speciosa , as the trees are formally known.

As he wistfully supervised the tree-cutting Saturday, Caltrans facilities manager Joe S. Loomis drew a picture of the trees’ 6- to 10-inch-long bloom and described its threat.

“You skate on ‘em like a banana peel,” said Loomis, who has fallen a few times himself.

And even though the towering trees blossom for less than a month in late spring, “That’s long enough to file a lawsuit,” Loomis noted. And then there are seed pods the size of avocados that can drop to the sidewalk, and the woody thorns dotting the tree trunks.

So, at a time when public officials from President Bush to Mayor Tom Bradley are encouraging widespread tree planting to beautify America and help blunt the “greenhouse effect,” Caltrans said it has no choice but to topple the stately, native Brazilian trees.

Even at that, Loomis said, the decision to destroy them was arrived at only after much debate. Caltrans landscapers explored moving the trees to a park better-suited for flowering trees, but their roots were not strong enough to survive a transfer.

“I’m losing my view, too,” said Loomis, 59, whose fifth-floor office overlooks the lawn from which some of the trees sprouted. His wife also works in the building, and he said she has “been all over me because this wild pack of parakeets won’t be around anymore to peck at the seed pods.”

Caltrans workers who chopped down the trees were torn about their destruction as well.

“It’s too bad, because they are perfectly healthy trees,” said a worker wearing a hard hat, watching as two others circled the base of a tree trunk with a chain saw.

Employees have repeatedly slid and fallen on the blooms, and it has only been “luck” that no one has sued the state.

Planted shortly after the Caltrans building went up in 1948, the trees were among the earliest planted as part of a campaign launched by Los Angeles Beautiful, a nonprofit group that has worked toward myriad community improvements.

“Those trees are absolutely breathtaking,” Los Angeles Beautiful Director Gail Watson said Saturday. “You go down Spring Street and it’s just beautiful. They brighten up a rather dark area. This whole thing is really a shame. But it’s true. Some flowers are (more troublesome) than others, and these are very moist and slippery.”

There are as many as 100,000 trees in downtown Los Angeles. But, Watson said, “You see less and less of the flowering trees because of the liabilities involved.”

The good news: the silk floss trees will be replaced. The state is spending about $30,000 to landscape the front of the Caltrans building, adding six trees from the sycamore or ficus families--species with little or no blossoms that stay green year-round. These trees are not as tall as their statuesque predecessors, but their roots ramble much less. The planting must go out to bid, and the sidewalks will have to be torn up to remove old roots.

Loomis said the work should be done by late June.