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By Mary Thurwachter
There used to be a sign on Lantana Road near the old A.G. Holley State Hospital, where Water Tower Commons stands today. The sign welcomed visitors to “Lantana, Fl, Tree City.” The sign is gone, but Lantana is still a Tree City.
Decades ago, to honor that distinction, Lantana adopted a tradition of planting a tree every Arbor Day, a practice the town continues to this day.
“We plant trees throughout the year, and we planted 100 for our centennial celebration” in 2021, Mayor Karen Lythgoe said.
Is a palm a tree?
Ilona Balfour, who lives on Hypoluxo Island with her husband, former Lantana Vice Mayor Malcolm Balfour, recalls the 2019 Arbor Day tree planting ceremony in Bicentennial Park. Dave Stewart, who was mayor at the time, pitched a fit when town staff gave him a palm tree to put in the ground, she said.
By then, Stewart had been educated on trees and refused to be photographed planting the palm tree, Balfour said. Stewart complained that the palm wasn’t a real tree but more of a grass.
That sent town staff scrambling to find what Stewart believed was a real tree to plant.
Stewart remembers that day and says Balfour was correct. “I didn’t want the Tree City officials seeing me plant a palm. It would have been an embarrassment. We had to plant real trees during my regime.”
The staff argued that a palm tree was a tree; it was called palm tree, after all.
Stewart disagreed.
“My fellow councilmen said I was being a jerk,” Stewart said. (He used another word for “jerk,” but we’ve cleaned it up a bit.)
In the end, a small oak was planted, and the commemorative photo was taken. No one recalls what happened to the rejected palm.
Tied to a tree?
Balfour is also the subject of local tree lore.
“Didn’t Ilona tell you about the time she tied herself to a large ficus tree when the Nature Preserve was being built in 2000?” Stewart asked. “She held a sign that read ‘Leave my tree Ilona,’” a wordplay on her first name.
However, that’s not exactly what happened.
Ilona Balfour said she threatened to tie herself to a “huge ficus tree full of birds. I wanted to save it” from being taken down.
“I got wind of it early one morning when I was in my nightgown,” said Balfour, whose home is close to the preserve. “I didn’t march over there in my nightgown, but I did say if the tree was touched, I would tie myself to it.
“Because it wasn’t a native tree, the ficus wasn’t protected, only the plants that were there before the white man came were allowed in the park,” she said. The town “made me sign a document that I would do nothing to stop them from cutting this tree down.
“Then Town Manager Mike Bornstein and arborist Mike Greenstein thought this was funny and took a little Bellie (a troll doll promotional gift from Burger King) and tied it to the branch they had taken from the ficus tree. Along with the doll (representing Balfour) there was a little sign tied to the branch that said, ‘Leave my tree Ilona.’
“They all got a good laugh from it,” Balfour remembered.
The ficus was taken down and replaced by a strangler fig.
The birds seem to like it — and Balfour’s story remains part of local lore, even if it stretched the truth.
Protected trees
The following trees are protected by the Town of Lantana:
Bald cypress
Black ironwood
Blolly
Cabbage palm
Chapman oak
Dahoon holly
False mastic
Fiddlewood
Florida elm
Geiger tree
Green buttonwood
Gumbo limbo
Lancewood
Laurel oak
Live oak
Mahogany
Myrtle oak
Paradise tree
Pigeon plum
Pond cypress
Red bay
Red maple
Royal palm
Sand live oak
Sand pine
Satinleaf
Sea grape
Silver buttonwood
Shortleaf fig
Slash pine
Soapberry
South Florida slash pine
Southern magnolia
Southern red cedar
Spicewood
Strangler fig
Sweet bay
Torchwood
The list of protected trees and list of trees that can be used for mitigation are interchangeable.
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