Evergreen elm (Chinese elm) in Los Angeles, California

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Before you plant something here in Arizona, one of the best things that you can do is to visit Los Angeles. Here is a beautiful example of an Evergreen Elm, also called a Chinese Elm. It is in a very nice neighborhood built in the early sixties and it gives you a much better idea of what the plants will grow up to be than just reading the labels at the nursery or looking at pictures on the internet. Even though Evergreen Elms are common in my neighborhood here in Glendale, I didn't even recognize this tree in LA until a friend of mine named it for me. My first thought was "Do they grow that big?", and yes, they do. And even this photo doesn't begin to show the huge size of the trunk, the spreading aspect, and the weeping leaves.

And don't be fooled by the name "evergreen". This tree is semi-decidious, that is, it drops all of it's leaves for a very short time in the winter. That means that ALL of these leaves from this huge tree will need to be cleaned up every year. A labor of love, I'm sure, but still labor!

Walking around nice neighborhoods in Los Angeles really gives you an idea of how much more luxurious a house looks with mature trees and plantings. The house right next door to this one, with hardly any plants at all, looks stark and bare. Many people don't realize that Los Angeles is a desert area, although much cooler than Phoenix, which gets very little rainfall. Remember that a desert is determined by lack of rainfall, not heat. So take a lesson from our older sister in California, La Reina de Los Angeles. She knows what she's doing!

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