By Peter Albert, DTNA President

No one is around in the blowing fog to share my admiration as I stop to study the Chinese Elm on Noe Street. It could have been rendered in prismacolor pencil by Dr. Seuss. The orange trunk is mottled giraffe-like in grey, white and ochre bark patches. Each long, twisting branch holds a clump of green tendrils that whip about in sudden gusts under the sulfur streetlamp. I catch a strand for a closer look at the tiny, shiny, serrated leaves just hardy enough to withstand wind burn, drought and chill. In an especially cold autumn, they will turn yellow and fall. This particular stand of light, airy elms is even sometimes outright spare in the winter.

Miraculously, Chinese Elms are not so susceptible to the Dutch Elm disease which has laid waste to some of this country's most beautiful elms. I advise city tree-lovers to make a pilgrimage to one of our very best streets: Magellan Avenue (near Cortes) in Forest Hill, where the canopy of grand old elms does more to make the street than architecture ever could. Some are already gone, though, and the Maytens replacing them only underline their absence -- making me wonder, among other thoughts: why weren't the more sympathetic parvifloria cousins used? For a while, scared urban foresters banned the planting of all elms here. Only recently, when its resistance to Dutch Elm Disease was confirmed, did the Chinese Elm find its way back into our City's streets. This same tree also graces the length of Folsom in the Mission and will soon be the signature tree of the Octavia Boulevard.