California now has more trees than at any time since the late
Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of
nature. It s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush,
American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing
nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters,
and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside,
planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and
landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose
tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the
lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the
Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets
with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest
anymore.
To the north the majestic coastal redwoods inspired awe and
invited exploitation. A resource in the state, the durable
heartwood of these timeless giants became infrastructure,
transformed by the saw teeth of American enterprise. By 1900 timber
firms owned the entire redwood forest; by 1950 they had clear-cut
almost all of the old-growth trees.
In time California s new landscape proved to be no paradise: the
eucalypts in the Berkeley hills exploded in fire; the orange groves
near Riverside froze on cold nights; Los Angeles s palms harbored
rats and dropped heavy fronds on the streets below. Disease,
infestation, and development all spelled decline for these
nonnative evergreens. In the north, however, a new forest of
second-growth redwood took root, nurtured by protective laws and
sustainable harvesting. Today there are more California redwoods
than there were a century ago.
Rich in character and story, Trees in Paradise is a dazzling
narrative that offers an insightful, new perspective on the history
of the Golden State and the American West."
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