Tag Archives: Washingtonia filifera

The San Fernando Mission Olives

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76 were planted, less than 50 remain. Most that are left seem in good shape, and are in good fruit.

“Why be contented with one olive tree,
When you could have a whole olive grove?
Why be content with a grove, when you could have
THE WORLD –??”

Wright and Forrest, “The Olive Tree” from KISMET

Around 1890, new Yankee cities were being carved out of the old Rancho ex-Mission San Fernando, and the smart money was clustered around the Southern Pacific right-of-way at the top of the Valley. The new rail cities became San Fernando and Chatsworth, and Sylmar and Pacoima. The big crop was olives; and many farmer-developers apparently made fortunes by pruning twigs off the old MIssion olive trees, rooting the cuttings, and re-planting the clones. In only a few years, the area had two or three of the biggest olive orchards History Has Ever Known.

The Franciscans’ Mission olives were planted for chrism, necessary for their rites. Olive, along with the Canary Island and Washingtonia palms, were introduced here for ritual purposes. And the sacred olives’ numerous progeny were eventually cured, branded, freighted down to LA in cans, then put on ships at the port of San Pedro. From there, they conquered the globe and Made Millions.

“In 1893, a group of Illinois businessmen purchased acres from the trustees of the Maclay Ranch east of the railroad tracks on San Fernando Road just south of Roxford Street and in 1894 began planting olives trees on up to 1,700 acres Experts were brought from France to supervise the work. Calling themselves the Los Angeles Olive Growers Association (in 1898 C.O. (Paul) Milltimore was the president and George L. Arnold the secretary), they built a packing plant and sold olives under the Tyler Olives label, later changing to the Sylmar Packing label. Sylmar’s olives became noted throughout the state for sweetness and purity. Chinese pickers were hired to harvest the crops, and up to 800 U.S. gallons (3,000 L) of olive oil a day were produced. The pickling plant was located on the corner of Roxford Street and San Fernando Road. By March 1898 about 200,000 trees had been planted,[15][19] and by 1906 the property had become the largest olive grove in the world. The first groves were planted with Mission, Nevadillo Blanco and Manzanillo olives.[15] Some Sevillano and Ascolano varieties were planted for extra-large fruit…

In 1904 the Sylmar brand olive oil won first place at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri; in 1906 at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Oregon;[23] and in 1915 at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

— From the Wikipedia entry on Sylmar

As far as I knew, and I’ve stomped all over the area, the Mission groves, and the commercial groves, had all been subdivided and developed. How great my joy, then, to find these while I was walking from the Orange Line Station at Chatsworth, seeking out the trailhead to the Old Stagecoach Road. These gifts of the Greeks line the last 1/2 mile of the quiet, horsey backstreet that, I now realize, is really the first “in-town” block of Chatsworth, the flat block after the Devil’s Slide, along the route of the ol’ Butterfield Stage.


I have no other information about Farmer Gray, but I do know, that the Butterfield family got into olive ranching in the Valley in a big way. Maybe Gray was an associate, or a tenant of theirs, or maybe his venture inspired the family to go in big on olives. At any rate, these tree were rooted over a hundred years ago, and are genetically identical — in fact, the living branches and cells of — the trees that the Franciscans and their Indian neophytes pruned and tended with their Own Hands. Pretty darn cool..especially to walk home under, after a hike to the the top of the Pass.

Where Are They Now? San Fernando’s Fan Palms

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Recall, Patient Reader: the very first palm trees in Los Angeles were those Canary Island date palms (below), planted at San Fernando Mission. This once-famous pair were planted, probably by Fr. Lasuen and Fr. Dumetz themselves, at a solemn mass at the 1797 dedication of the cemetery. These were the palms to be used on Palm Sunday, the emblems of triumph, martyrdom, and resurection, Phoenix canarensis. These palms, which were admired by travelers and painted and photographed as beloved relics, even after the Mission had crumbled, somehow disappeared from history without a trace.

But there were other, equally famous palms at San Fernando: that towering row of California Fan Palms that were planted out in the olive groves, just south of the Convento, probably sometime in the mid-1820’s. Since the first Spanish contact with the Agua Caliente band, whose canyons at Palm Springs engendered the palms, seem to have been in 1822, it need not have been long after that a few of those palms ended up at San Fernando.

  • …tourists, note the car…
  • …tourists…
  • Abbot Kinney and H.H. Jackson

[Intriguingly, an artist depicted Don Andres Pico in the 1850s, at home on the Convento corrida, with a view south over the olive grove. The artist notes both kinds of palms out there, the bushy fan palms on the left, and date palms, center and on the right, toward the ranch house.]

I hunted around Mission Hills to find old Washington filiferas, and tried to triangulate distance by the hills. There were some stately trunks the south side of Brand Blvd. that gave pause, especially this one:

Maybe it was put in when Brand Park and the P.E. station were developed, i.e., 1913? Plus it’s too close to the Convento; the historic trees were out in the groves, not close to the road.

Then I found…

The corner of Los Olivos Street and Burnett Avenue, I was amazed to spot the following battered but hardy specimen, which seems to have lived a life of incident. Is it the right trunk size and shape to maybe be the small palm to the east? Suspiciously off plumb from the street grid, the base has been (recently!) encased in concrete. It was common just before WWI, in the Valley, for developers to build rail-adjacent tracts sold as small farm plots, with only dirt roads and no sidewalks (low taxes, rural feel). Could this palm have survived simply because it fell on a strip of “public” land at the back of an old farm lot, and a sleepy lane? One that was, in the ’50s, subdivided and graded, but never (until recently) put to sidewalk? Yes, theoretically; this sequence is typical of the Valley.

The land south of the Convento seems to have been an open wheat field until after the turn of the century. When the Red Cars came in along Sepulveda/Brand boulevards, about 1913, the P.E. laid out six streets just south of the Convento and the station, for a sub-division tract. This neighborhood is right on top of the olive grove, directly adjacent to the old mayordomo’s house (i.e., the Pico Adobe). There are still many olive trees in the vicinity. But only one big filifera.

Modernity may diminish this specimen in photographs. Those white pickups are monster vehicles compared with, say, the Tin Lizzie in the tourist shot above.

Its height roughly triangulates with the hills and the Convento, following the treeline and the electrical tower. I hazard the guess that this may be a last survivor of the historic San Fernando fan palms; or at least, it is on the spot and may be kin to one of those trees. Any reader suggestions on how to pin this down further?

The Alta California Fan Palm

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Washingtonia filifera. This is the only palm tree native to the U.S. State of California. It is the northern species, or sub-species, of a residual genus, Washingtonia, that was once abundant in a wide area of the Southwest. Now, in the wild it is limited to favored canyons, a thin ribbon of springs and watercourses hugging the border, through the Anza-Borrego and the Colorado desert, into Arizona and New Mexico. It has naturalized in Texas and Florida, where some consider it invasive.

Washingtonia palms, of which there are three species or sub-species (more, anon) were classified and named in 1879 by German botanist Herman von Wendland. Apparently, the only thing he knew about the plants, apart from the most intimate details of their anatomy, reproduction, natural history and comparative botany, was that they came from someplace in America, so he called them after George Washington. Sweet.

Like all palms, they are not trees, but grasses. Unlike most grasses, however, Washingtonias can live for 500 years. Their nuts are tasty to wildlife (and humans) and they have had no problem reproducing themselves in the well-watered suburban sprawl of the Southland. Washingtonias love to grow cheek-by-jowl with their kin. Often you can find volunteer seedlings by the score per square foot, say, in a freeway median or a crack in a sidewalk. I’m told they can be mowed into a turf. They can be potted, as see. This was a volunteer seedling in our container garden.

Looking at the sun through the underside of the fan.

The Cahuilla Indians of Palm Springs provide public access to hiking among these ancient wonders in their historic homelands, Palm Canyon, Indian Canyon and Andreas Canyon. There are also oases in Joshua Tree National Park. Nobody can forget the awe-striking forests of columns, the primeval gray-green of their hairy leaves, glistening in the Coachella Valley sunshine, or the shaggy long petticoats that make them seem like a corps of dancing girls.

  • Indian Canyon, Palm Springs
  • Joshua Tree

Here are the famous California fan palms of San Fernando, the first Washingtonia palms planted in what became the City of Los Angeles, probably by Franciscans in the 1820s. For many years they were a tourist attraction, but I can’t discover what happened to these trees.

The petticoats are full. The man in the hat, I think, is Abbott Kinney; and the lady in the carriage, looking longingly at the Convento, is Helen Hunt Jackson, gathering local color for “Ramona”.
  • …tourists…
  • …more tourists, now in a car…
…dry wheat farming…feral olive trees…and lo, there was another fan palm on the Rancho Ex-San Fernando; possibly the oldest. It is rarely seen in photos.

HOW TO TELL A FILIFERA:

  • Stately and imposing, beautifully proportioned, with a large open crown and a straight thick trunk shaped like a column in an ancient temple.
  • The fan-shaped leaves are tipped with distinct threads.
  • In the field, they are marcesent, meaning they keep their “petticoats” in a tight nap to the trunks, appearing neat, but shaggy. The Cahuilla tended the oases by strategically burning off the petticoats, making the trunks easier to climb. In the city they are usually trimmed, for rats and other urban critters love them.
Filifera means “thread-bearer.” The tips of the fronds trail wisps of thread.