Ways Not To Think About Plastic Trees: New Foundations for Environmental Law

Baudelaire's Rave Parisien paints what is quite literally a still life -a dreamscape of a metallic city where groves of colonnades stand in the place of trees and, in the place of water, pools of lead.2 More prosaic but no less unnerving was the recent decision by Los Angeles County officials to install more than 900 plastic trees and shrubs in concrete planters along the median strip of a major boulevard.3 The construction of a new box culvert, it seemed, had left only 12 to 18 inches of dirt on the strip, insufficient to sustain natural trees.4 County officials decided to experiment with artificial plants constructed of factory-made leaves and branches wired to plumbing pipes, covered with plastic and "planted" in aggregate rock coated with epoxy.' Although a number of the trees were torn down by unknown vandals" and further plantings were halted, 7 the tale may not be over. For an article in Sciences suggested recently that, just as advertising