The Chavez Ravine Arboretum Kauri

The oldest and largest Queensland kauri in the United States is not in a botanical garden. It stands on an open hillside above Dodger Stadium's parking lots, in a public park with no gate, no staff and no admission. Chavez Ravine Arboretum was planted in 1893, which makes it one of the oldest collections of trees in Los Angeles and older than the stadium that now wraps around part of the ravine. More than a hundred species went into that slope. The kauri is the one both published accounts of the place single out: Agathis robusta, a Queensland rainforest conifer that grows into a smooth grey column, and reckoned the biggest and oldest of its kind in the country. The arboretum around it is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument number 48, which is a formal way of saying the city noticed late that a Victorian planting experiment had turned into a forest. Two things to carry with you. Nobody has published a girth, a height or a planting date for this particular tree, so the claim rests on the arboretum's own age rather than on anyone's tape measure. And our pin marks the arboretum, not the trunk, so you will be walking the hill to find it. If you do find it, tell us where it stands and we will fix the map for everyone after you.