Reply To: Scary: Red Palm Weevil found in Southern California

Arrgh! Sore topic with me! Mex fan palms are close to the native, I forget the exact designation for the native palms, BUT – these things grow in OASIS of water, not lining the streets or highways, which are best described as arroyos, rather than OASIS.
I have been thinking of this conceptual conflict recently – do you want to plant native plants, or do you want to determine what kind of landscape, within the native range, you need to design for..Shopping Malls are NOT oasis’ …Your mall may used to be a nice valley oak and grasses steppe formation, but the hydrology, once it has been transformed, is NOT that of an oak grasslands – it is usually a floodplain type hydrology, or in the west floodplains are called arroyos..Extremely dry and occaisionally flooded.. NOT an Oasis!

I think this is a fundamental confusion in planting with native plants..The landscape palette you need to find is not just what used to be there, but what humans have made it, and then try to work with that, in the native palette..NO MEX FAN Palms!!! Only if you are ostentatiously and consciously wasting water and making your shopping center idiom the oasis, taking from everything around it for itself only..

New (remembered from UPenn, actually) thinking path for me, open to argument on that issue..