Prices for coveted Canary Island palms (casinos average a couple of hundred per beautification project) have shot up 130 percent to $8,000 per tree in the last three years. The supply is so tight that Hoffman and others rely on “palm-tree spotters” who prowl neighborhoods for Canarys, offering up to $1,000 per tree. W. T. Vinson, a 58-year-old illustrator in Riverside, Calif., who recently took $1,700 for four palms, was happy to oblige.
“Those palm trees are full of just about everything–rats, pigeons, snakes.” Where Vinson sees an aerie for vermin, Vegas sees decoration for desert palaces, a.k.a. casinos. And the city has been snaffling so many of the trees that it’s touched off a palm-tree war with California. In September 1995 Las Vegas snatched 50 trees a landscaper had reserved for San Francisco. That city’s Department of Public Works landscape architect, Martha Ketterer, is hustling to find the 120 trees she needs for the waterfront. Critics who carp that palms are out of place in sophisticated San Francisco are all wet, she says. “Hey, take a Greek pillar and put some fronds on top and you’ve got a palm.”
