Tree Tour

Jeff Zoumbaris can go gaga over all the jacarandas he wants (‘Tree Expert to Lead Tour Highlighting the Arboreal Wonders of the Valley,” Nov. 16), but any tour he conducts to showcase the tree treats of the San Fernando Valley should include a stop--and a moment of sad silence--at the corner of Louise Avenue and Ventura Boulevard in Encino. The huge live oak that proudly stood there for an estimated 1,000 years fell in February 1998. Its loss was devastating to many in the community. And while some place the blame on the El Nino-powered storms that deluged Los Angeles that winter, the greater cause of the historic tree’s destruction is that somewhere around its 940th birthday, there began in the Valley an influx of pollution and pavement and progress by a population that did little to protect it.

WILL CAMPBELL

Encino