Oasis in O.C.

Where does an old date palm go to put down new roots?

Plenty of the trees--some kicked out to make way for land development and some simply past their prime as date producers--are moving out of the California Mojave to more suburban areas. Like the malls of Orange County.

More than 10,000 of the palms were uprooted last year from the Coachella Valley, where, for most of the century, they have produced the nation’s date crop.

The stately trees have become so prized by landscape architects for their beauty that their ability to make food is not even part of the negotiations.

The exotic look comes with a hefty price tag. The trees, which are priced by the foot and can weigh three tons or more, have to be handled skillfully. By the time a mature 25-footer has been uprooted, moved and replanted, the cost can be as much as $3,000 a tree.

For a number of years now, date palms--Phoenix dactylifera--have been primarily shipped to Phoenix and Las Vegas, but increasingly their destination is Orange County.

And it seems there’s no better place to create a palm oasis than near where people go to shop.

Irvine’s Marketplace III, opened a week ago, was transformed into an oasis overnight when 235 date palms sprouted full-grown from the parking lot.

On the other side of Jamboree Road, at the Tustin Market Place, hundreds more of the palms create acres of shade for shoppers and their cars.

In Anaheim, on Katella Avenue at Harbor Boulevard, 212 palms have been sunk into the ground to shade the medians and sidewalks in the redevelopment near Disneyland.

The ever-expanding Irvine Spectrum, with its Moorish-inspired architecture, anchors its landscape theme with the date palm.

Getting the arboreal skyscrapers out of the desert and into a coastal home is an arduous task.

At a plantation overlooking the Salton Sea near Thermal, a crew has the exhausting job of uprooting the giant palms. After cutting a trench around the root, the crew uses a customized tractor to pop each tree like a cork from the desert floor.

Within 24 hours of excavation, the trees are transported to their new homes and placed in holes prepared with irrigation lines, drains, washed sand and gravel.

Given 100 gallons of water a day for months, the trees adapt to the more moderate Orange County climate. Without the desert’s heat they no longer produce edible dates, which is all to the good, according to groundskeepers.

So, why doesn’t a gangly transplanted palm fall over?

The dense root ball, which is sunk as much as 4 feet into the ground, weighs more than the trunk and fronds combined.