My Favorite Christmas Tree

SAN FRANCISCO--I narrowed my eyes and cocked my head when I first saw them--street trees with soft gray-green leaves and red pompom blossoms. Couldn't be a bottlebrush, the Australian immigrant so common in L.A. These trees made me sit up and take notice because they looked like urban cousins of the enchanting 'ohi'a lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) growing high in the misty cloud forests of Hawai'i, pollinated by red and green birds--honeycreepers--found nowhere else in the world.

Kissing cousins indeed, for these trees are Metrosideros excelsus, the New Zealand Christmas Tree, related to the native Hawaiian tree as the Maori people are related to the kanaka maoli of Hawai'i. Red and green, they reach their peak in midsummer--Christmastime in New Zealand, hence the common name. The maori name is pohutukawa or "drenched with spray," for it is a coastal tree in its native land and one of the few that can stand up to the coastal climate of San Francisco--the salty sand, wind and fog that keeps the city from having many native trees of its own. Perhaps a live oak or a California buckeye could claim indigenous roots.

So be it. I love an alien. I admit I love it partly with nostalgia for a landscape far away. But I also love the New Zealand Christmas Tree here and now gracing the seaside streets of San Francisco at Christmastime.

Season's greetings from the City by the Bay.