Читать книгу The Trees of San Francisco онлайн

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It’s too bad that avocado trees aren’t more common on San Francisco streets, because most of the specimens in the city are beautiful and healthy trees. Even if they don’t produce much fruit in the city, avocado trees are attractive ornamentals, with handsome glossy foliage and an open branching pattern that reaches to 35 feet.

Acacia baileyana

BAILEY’S ACACIA

LOCATION: 1201 Shrader St./Grattan St. in Cole Valley; also at 236 Ashbury St./Fell St. near the Golden Gate Park panhandle

This Australian native is the harbinger of spring in San Francisco. It is the earliest tree to flower, putting out brilliant yellow blossoms in January. (As a native of northern New York, I still find it jarring to associate January with spring.) The tree is popular for its feathery, blue-gray foliage, although the ‘Purpurea’ variety has lavender new growth.

Bailey’s acacia is one of the fastest-growing San Francisco street trees, quickly reaching 20–30 feet in both height and width. Like most fastgrowing trees, however, it is short lived, typically surviving no more than 25 years. Known as Cootamundra wattle in Australia, this plant is native to a small area near the town of Cootamundra in New South Wales. It is a woody shrub in the wild, but it can be trained to grow as a tree.