Mystery trees of Tel Aviv

Sometimes reference librarians ask ourselves questions—especially in times of social isolation! Since libraries are closed, I have been rereading my own collection of books. When I Lived in Modern Times is a novel by Linda Grant, set in 1940s Tel Aviv before Israel became a state. The main character refers several times to unnamed trees that are growing along Rothschild Boulevard (Sderot Rothschild). The trees are noteworthy, yet she cannot identify them. After having read this book twenty years ago, I decided it was time to solve the mystery!

 

By searching Google Maps, I could see there were two main types of trees. It’s a mile-long road with a central pedestrian thoroughfare, and in researching sources like Tel Aviv municipal archives and local news, I determined that both Delonix regia and Ficus (F. microcarpa and F. sycomorus) grow there. Delonix, native to Madagascar, was introduced to Israel in the 1920s and may have been planted on the boulevard then or later. The trees are depicted in a 1937 painting by Yehezkel Streichman, “The Kiosk on Rothschild Boulevard.” The ficus trees on Rothschild Boulevard were planted in the 1930s. Although jacaranda trees are mentioned in various historical sources, I did not see contemporary images of them, though a 1946 photo of Rothschild Boulevard at the intersection of Allenby Street (the very corner mentioned in Grant’s novel) shows jacaranda and ficus branches overhanging a photographer’s sidewalk photo-shoot.

Tel Aviv’s founders—with one exception—believed they could ‘make something from nothing’ (yesh me’ayin) of this sandy location. The lone dissenter thought it folly and, in a 1909 photo celebrating the city’s founding, he stands far apart from the others, atop a distant dune, possibly still muttering ‘crazy people, there’s no water here’ (meshuga’im—ayn kan mayim!).

Rothschild Boulevard was built in 1910, utilizing a sand-filled wadi (dry riverbed) which was not stable enough for buildings. The street’s original name was Rehov Ha’Am, Street of the Nation (or the People). Cypresses formed the outline of the boulevard’s edges, with grass and flowerbeds in the middle.

The city’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff had grand and somewhat impractical urban planning ideas. He wanted to impress Winston Churchill (who was due for a visit in 1921) by creating a tree-lined boulevard to rival any in Europe. Mature trees were transplanted from nearby locations, but they did not have time to establish themselves in the arid soil. When people thronged to see Churchill, some climbed the trees, toppling them. Churchill reportedly said, “That which has no roots is bound to wither,” a sly, barbed remark, coming from the man who was Secretary of State for the Colonies during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine.

In 1925, Patrick Geddes, a Scottish botanist and town planner, produced a plan for Tel Aviv. He envisioned a “garden city,” with a blend of “mainways” (for vehicles) and “homeways” (residential interior streets), and a series of east-west green boulevards to connect key urban sites, so the city would have a strong sense of nature.

To this day, Rothschild Boulevard is a well-used tree-lined corridor through the heart of a busy city. Just as we have cherry blossom mania in spring here in Seattle, there is great excitement when the red flowers of Delonix regia (known as flame tree, Royal Poinciana, Flamboyant, Gulmohar, and in Hebrew tze’elon naeh) bloom in early June. The ficus trees with their pale trunks sometimes covered in a net of accessory trunks made of aerial roots, are stately but drop fruit that can be perilous for pedestrians. Still, they are a notable feature of the landscape; Tel Aviv-Yafo municipal agronomist Haim Gavriel even published a recent monograph about the Ficus of Israel’s Boulevards.

Resources that were useful in researching this mystery include:

• Mann, Barbara. A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space. Stanford University Press, 2006. [accessed online 4/25/2020]
• Mann, Barbara. “Tel Aviv’s Rothschild: When a boulevard becomes a monument.” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter, 2001), pp. 1-38. [accessed online 4/24/2020]
• Rosenberg, Elissa. “Tel Aviv never stops.” Landscape Architecture Magazine 107 (11), 120-128