The Crystal Springs Heritage Sycamore

In September 2014 more than a hundred people turned up in Griffith Park to protest on behalf of one tree. This California sycamore at the Crystal Springs picnic area stood where the city wanted two youth baseball fields, and the project's own environmental report admitted it could remove up to 49 trees, this one included. It is an official City of Los Angeles Heritage Tree. The Friends of Griffith Park say it may be as old as 200 years, and nobody has published a firmer number, so read that as an upper bound rather than a measurement. The Friends and the Griffith J. Griffith Charitable Trust sued over the environmental report, and the rally they called was named, plainly, Save the Sycamore. It worked. A settlement signed on 2 June 2016 names the tree outright, "the Heritage Western Sycamore, a living artifact of Los Angeles", and protects it along with 44 other trees, many of them native coast live oaks. If a ballfield is ever built, it will be a single smaller one of 260 feet, with no protected native tree lost. Two honest caveats. The newest source we found confirming the tree is that 2016 settlement; the picnic area is still open and nothing suggests the sycamore has gone, but if you stand under it, tell us. And our pin marks the picnic area, not the trunk, so expect to look around.