The Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen

uncelebrated heroes of the urban environment. They not only add their small touch of shade and beauty to the starkest troughs of the city; they also cut winds, absorb noise, reduce glare, mitigate the extremes of temperature, and help appreciably to filter the city air. But how do they themselves fare? What sort of existence is it, living sealed off from the recycling flow of every soil nutrient, robbed of direct sunlight by skyscrapers, poisoned with road salt and poodle piss, deprived each autumn of even their own leaf mulch, choking on those various elaborate toxins of automobile exhaust? Is a tree such an amazingly stoic organism that such abuse doesn’t matter? Or are their lives nasty, brutish, and short?
    Does the mortification of having to stand stupidly in straightrows show itself in a lowered life expectancy? Does smoke stunt their growth? Does their sap flow bitter?
    I wondered especially about a single small tree that grows out of a pit in the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan, on Forty-fourth Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth. This particular tree is barely more than a sapling—slender, sparse of crown, lonely and incongruous, with the Pan Am Building looming about a half mile above in the eastern sky. Last time I saw it, though, against even those odds, the thing was alive. I happen to be aware of this tree only because, down there in the canyon of Forty-fourth Street, it graces the entrance to the once reputable hotel where I stay when I’m in New York. Actually this tree is one of a pair, both of them small but spunky, both growing right out of that sidewalk on the south side of Forty-fourth, scarcely more than a bus length between; mine is the more westerly of the two. But I use the word “mine” undeservedly, confessing that I’ve never so much as noticed what species it is. I have no idea how it survives. Like everyone else, I have taken that tree for granted. So I decided to call the man responsible for worrying about the creatures no one else worries about, the street trees of New York City.
    His name is Adrian Benepe. His title is Director of Natural Resources for the New York Department of Parks and Recreation. He seems to be a relaxed and sensitive fellow, and it was clear that I had the right guy (after some wrong tries) when he did not judge me a lunatic or a bothersome crank for stating that I’d phoned from Montana to inquire about the condition of this particular sapling I know on West Forty-fourth.
    Adrian Benepe told me: “It’s not easy being green in New York.”
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    Street trees have an improbable history. Up through the Middle Ages, in Europe, they didn’t exist. The defensive walls that surrounded a medieval city were drawn about tightly, intended toprotect the inhabitants and their property from raiding enemies, and trees were a superfluity that could damn well take their chances outside. Back in the imperial days of Egypt and Rome, some spectacular palace gardens had been cultivated within urban boundaries, but those gardens were emphatically private, reserved for the enjoyment of the ruling classes. Street trees, on the other hand, are by definition public and populist. So it’s ironic that their most influential precursor may have been Louis XIV’s spread at Versailles.
    Versailles was designed between 1661 and 1674 by a fellow named André Le Nôtre, now considered the first of the great landscape architects. The term itself— landscape architect —suggests something of the revolution that Le Nôtre brought to urban planting; his own father, under whom he apprenticed, is referred to, in contrast, as having been the king’s master gardener. Le Nôtre the son studied painting as well as horticulture, and was evidently affected by what he learned of drafting and perspective. He grew into a gardener with an architectonic eye. His work is marked by the use of trees—planted in