On the Fourth of July in 2025, one of the coral trees running down the median of San Vicente Boulevard came down on its own. No storm, no car strike, just the kind of failure that has become common enough on this stretch that people who live nearby have stopped treating it as news. The bigger question since then is what the rules governing the median allow the city to do in response.
The coral trees on San Vicente are not ordinary street trees. The median they stand in was declared Cultural Heritage Board Monument No. 148 by the City of Los Angeles in 1976. The designation preserves the median as a historic corridor, and it also specifies coral trees, so the city's options for replacing the ones that die are limited to more coral trees, a species now dealing with pests and water stress along this stretch.
A Streetcar Line Became a Two-Mile Canopy
The median exists because a train used to run through it. The Pacific Electric Railroad's Westgate line carried streetcars down San Vicente from Santa Monica toward downtown, cutting through a stretch that included part of the VA campus. The tracks came out around 1942, and for a few years the median sat as bare ground.
In 1949, Valley Knudsen, wife of dairy executive Thomas Knudsen, founded a civic group called Los Angeles Beautiful with a mission that included planting ornamental trees along streets. Her group chose the coral tree, Erythrina caffra, a species native to South Africa, and put roughly 126 of them into the empty median. By 1966 the trees had filled in enough that Mayor Sam Yorty named the coral tree the official tree of the City of Los Angeles, citing its beauty and versatility and its fit with the city's Spanish and Mexican heritage. A decade later, in 1976, the median itself became a protected monument.
The red spring blossoms have long been the median's signature. Many of the trees began to decline more than a decade ago, a period when limited maintenance funding was a factor.
Two Pests Are Doing Most of the Damage
According to Donald R. Hodel, an environmental horticulture advisor with UC Cooperative Extension, two relatively recent pests are responsible for most of the decline. The Erythrina Stem Borer is a moth that lays eggs in branch tips, and the larvae burrow in and kill the tip outright. The tree responds by pushing out new growth, which the moths lay eggs in again, until the branch simply stops growing. The Invasive Shot Hole Borer works differently, tunneling into the trunk and main branches to lay its eggs there instead.
Hodel has also pointed to a maintenance problem layered on top of the pest problem. Coral trees come from a climate a lot like Southern California's and do not want much water once established, but street medians tend to get watered and fertilized well past what the species can use, which produces exactly the kind of fast, brittle growth that breaks apart on its own. An independent arborist who inspected thirteen trees along the Santa Monica stretch of the corridor found twelve in poor health, worn down by years of drought stress. Only a few of the original trees remain today.
What the $1.2 Million Project Covers
StreetsLA has a $1.2 million median renovation planned, funded with support from state Senator Allan, that brings drought-tolerant landscaping and high-efficiency irrigation to the corridor. StreetsLA and City Council District 11 scheduled a virtual community briefing on the plan for November 19, 2025, so residents could see the selected plants.
According to StreetsLA, the median's historic designation requires that only coral trees be planted there, so the project does not add any other tree species. The funding goes to the ground-level landscaping and the irrigation.
The new irrigation and drought-tolerant plantings address water use along the median. The trees themselves remain coral trees, the species the designation calls for.
What Else Could Grow There
One idea that has been raised locally is a species swap. The alternatives suggested include native trees suited to the local climate:
- Coast live oak, which spreads a broad evergreen canopy and can live for centuries on rainfall alone
- Western redbud, which blooms magenta each spring
- Desert willow, which flowers in pink for months on very little water
- Palo verde, which blooms in gold for months on very little water
Under the designation as it stands, only coral trees can be planted in the median, so none of these would be options without a change to those terms.
Nancy Freedman, a Brentwood resident of more than 40 years and a former chair of the Brentwood Community Council, has described the median's history this way. A Red Line train ran there until it was removed as cars and freeways took priority, and the coral trees were planted in the space the tracks left behind. She has called the coral the wrong tree for the median, and also one that has been enjoyed for its beauty.
The Median Is Also Where People Already Are
The median itself doubles as an informal jogging and walking path. Protected and parking-protected bike lanes were added on parts of San Vicente in 2024 and 2025, giving the corridor more ways to move through it that do not involve a car.
The Brentwood Farmers Market runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the corner of San Vicente and Gretna Green Way, next to the Brentwood Country Club.
What Comes Next
The median's designation calls for coral trees, and the planned renovation works within that requirement, adding drought-tolerant landscaping and high-efficiency irrigation. Only a few of the original trees remain. Whether other species could someday be planted would depend on the terms of the designation itself.
The median was declared a Historic-Cultural Monument on March 3, 1976, and the coral trees on San Vicente were planted along the old streetcar right-of-way around 1950.
If you have questions about San Vicente, the median, or how Brentwood is changing, Danny Mishevski is glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.
