One of the strangest things on San Vicente Boulevard is the majestic existence of coral trees.
They are in fact, by their real and distinguished genus name, called Erythrina, from the Greek word “erythros,†which means red. The seeds of about a third of the different species of coral trees can be quite toxic, as a strong alkaloid compound.
Coral trees are found in Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam and India among many other places. In Kerala, the tree is called Mullumuriku which when you come to think of it, is a rather pretty and fancy name.
Well, never being deterred by alkaloids and other little diminutive scourges, I love for lunch, getting myself a black tea with lemon, a small tub of fruit salad, a good book and walking to San Vicente central aisle, I plop myself under one of those majestic Mullumuriku. I tend to choose that name since, you will acknowledge, it is somewhat more romantic than the pedestrian coral appellation.
Now when you sit under a Mullumuriku, you have to look pretty hard how the trunk is bending so that, if you dive into a particularly good read, your back will not suffer too much when, an hour later, you decide to do something else.
To tell you the truth, if the book is great, you will lose all hearing of any traffic passing by, protected by the majesty of the Mullumuriku.
Sometimes, so intent on your reading and whence steeped into complete stillness, if you look up, you may find a tiny country mouse curious what a human being is doing on her Brentwood center aisle territory.
Then, at other times, since Mullumuriku tend to have unpredictable reaction to fatigue, they may let go of one big arm, right there in front of you, and with a delicious crack it will flounder at your feet of all about 800 stones. So, I would say reading a book for about one hour on San Vicente Boulevard, at the foot of a majestic tree, may have its drawbacks. Again, compared to its pleasures, the impediment is minimal.
All in all, the coral trees behave perfectly well. Imagine they’d rebel, and decide one night to uproot themselves and relocate immediately on the two asphalted sides. We would be so surprised the next morning.
But it is the gardener who would be happy, at last able to mow the lawn all straight from the VA to the ocean.
