The Sweet Bay at the Customs House

The tree the Romans cut their victory crowns from is growing on a Financial District sidewalk, outside a federal customs house. Sweet bay, bay laurel, Grecian laurel: one Mediterranean species, Laurus nobilis, the laurel of laureates and of the leaves in a pot of stock, standing at the northwest corner of Battery and Jackson. San Francisco landmarked it formally. The Board of Supervisors passed resolution 670-05 in 2005, which is the kind of paperwork usually spent on buildings, and Mike Sullivan's Trees of San Francisco pins it to the same corner, in front of the United States Customs House. The tree is on the public right-of-way, so the federal building behind it changes nothing about walking up. It is a sensible tree for this city, whatever the classical associations. Laurus nobilis comes from a climate of dry summers and wet winters, which is San Francisco's own, and it takes wind and fog without complaint, both of which the corner supplies. No age, girth or height has been published for it anywhere we could reach, so how long it has stood on this corner is an open question, and one a reader with the right city record could close in a sentence. Jackson Square around it is a good walk regardless.