Moreton Bay Fig Trees Again...

Any followers of this blog will know of my obsession with the wondrous Moreton Bay Fig trees, especially those on La Mesa Drive in Santa Monica. I am regularly drawn to them and each time find something new to overwhelm me yet again.

When you leave the sunshine of San Vicente Boulevard and plunge into this strange shady tunnel, you can become very aware of the graphic patterns of the leaves' shadows on the limbs of the trees, as I was when I last went there:






And the windows of light you get between the branches I find a constant fascination:



But what always absorb and excite me are the amazing sculptural- or sometimes almost etched- details you find on each tree:





This tree I call the Bondage Tree, with the very designed "ropes" of its aerial roots:




This next tree I always have to photograph- I just love its totally sculptural modelling:




And this last time I was there I caught sight of this oddity among the roots:


And I love the varied colours and spots you get on the figs, according to their ripeness:



The ground is at present covered with the dark purple over-ripe fallen figs...

Moreton Bay Fig Trees

Anyone who has followed this blog for some time will know of my obsession (one of my obsessions!) with the extraordinary Moreton Bay Fig Trees- especially those on La Mesa Drive. A member of the Banyan tree family, Ficus Macrophylla originates in the rain forests of Australia and sends down aerial roots which, on establishing themselves in the ground can help support the weight of the often massive limbs.

What is special about La Mesa Drive is that the trees form a wondrous avenue on a crescent; you walk along the road seeing one amazing tree after another...On returning to LA, one of the first things I did was to walk down this street, falling in love with the trees all over again and feeling ecstatic...

Starting with a general view:


And here are some of the aerial roots- I love the different textures between them and the main bodies of the trees, the difference between youth and old age :



This is one of my favourite trees, incredibly sculptural:


And here is a mad tree:


Another thing I love is the way the trunks and branches frame their backgrounds:



Here there is a contrast with a delicate little Fall, yellow-leaved Ginkgo tree:


And here one of the human-like sculptural shapes:


I find the individual patterning on the bark engrossing:


Especially when contrasted with the terracotta aerial roots


And as for the aerial roots....







These I just like for their bony quality:


Now for the figs, which I find quite delightful. Like all figs, they are pollinated by the Fig Wasp, the Fig Wasp only being able to reproduce in the fig flower.




There I will finish- but I'm sure I'll be back again among the Moreton Bay Figs very soon...

More Moreton Bay Fig Trees

I have written often about one of my favourite trees- the Moreton Bay Fig. Having today yet again passed through the wondrous avenues of them on La Mesa Drive, I thought I would show some more recent and not-so-recent images of the trees there. The sculptural formations of their organic limbs never cease to astound me:

Shadows of Leaves

Yet another of my obsessions is Shadows- shadows on trees, shadows of trees...any kind of shadows. So in this post I will show the shadows of leaves that have recently caught my eye. The first four images are of shadows on a Pittosporum Tree, in the grounds of the property on Broadway Blvd/26th Street that I recently wrote about in my post "Tree-for-All"





The next three are of shadows on Moreton Bay Fig trees on La Mesa Drive, that I have written about many times:




Finally, here are shadows of a Fern Tree on the sidewalk of a street near La Brea Blvd that I saw when I was walking with my Granddaughter Violet in her stroller, while her mother was in a meeting: