Why the Palms Along City Park's Great Lawn Are Coming Down, and What It Says About the Ones on Your Street

The Medjool date palms along the promenades of City Park's Great Lawn were scheduled to start coming down on Monday, October 26. The City Park Conservancy decided to take out the whole group, including trees that still look healthy, after its own arborist and an outside tree care company evaluated them. The cause is Lethal Bronzing Disease. It has no cure, and Louisiana's first confirmed case was found in this same park.

The reason behind this removal reaches well past the park. The disease first found in City Park has spread along the palm-lined medians of Mid-City. Every owner of an exposed palm, whether a park conservancy, a downtown district or a homeowner on a side street, faces the same choice. They can pay for treatment several times a year for as long as the tree stands, or they can cut it down. On the Great Lawn, the Conservancy chose to cut.

Sixteen years of palms on a three-acre lawn

The Great Lawn opened in 2010, and the Medjool date palms along its promenades have been part of it from the start. The Conservancy calls them "a defining feature of this three-acre landscape." The park's 2050 master plan lists the Woldenberg Great Lawn as one of the contemporary additions in the Bayou Metairie section of the park.

The Conservancy's project page says several of the palms had already died despite treatment. Removal was chosen "to protect visitor safety and help reduce the risk of further spread to other palms throughout the Park." The page also explains why apparently healthy trees are coming down with the sick ones: "infected trees may not always display visible symptoms."

If you're heading over during the work, expect temporary access restrictions along parts of the promenades, posted signs and barriers around active work areas. City Putt and Imperial Woodpecker Sno-Balls will stay open for the whole project.

How a Florida disease got to Mid-City

Lethal bronzing is caused by a phytoplasma, a bacterium that lives in a palm's phloem. University of Florida IFAS identifies the insect that spreads it as a planthopper, Haplaxius crudus. In a 2020 study in Plant Health Progress, LSU researchers worked out how it most likely reached New Orleans. Many palms in New Orleans and neighboring cities were damaged by Katrina's storm surge in 2005. The replacements planted in 2007 and 2008 came from Florida, where the disease was common in nurseries and landscapes. The palms City Park planted in the years after Katrina came from Florida too. The study concluded that moving infected palms, or palms carrying infected planthoppers, very likely brought the disease into Louisiana.

The timeline below is assembled from the study, the Conservancy and local news coverage:

1. 1930s. A Canary Island date palm is planted in City Park during the Works Progress Administration era. Decades later it tests positive.
2. 1975. Canary Island date palms grown from seed at a Parks and Parkways nursery are planted on North Carrollton Avenue.
3. 2007–2008. Florida-grown palms replace trees lost to Katrina across the city.
4. 2010. The Great Lawn opens with Medjool date palms along its promenades.
5. December 2013. Lethal bronzing is identified in Louisiana for the first time, at City Park.
6. 2015. Fox 8 reports a park spokesperson's estimate that 30 to 35 park palms have already been lost.
7. 2015–2016. LSU surveys palms across southern Louisiana and finds infection concentrated in and around City Park.
8. October 26, 2026. Scheduled start of the Great Lawn removal.

The route runs up North Carrollton

Most of the infected palms LSU found were in and around City Park. The researchers wrote that the disease "appears to have spread throughout the park and along North Carrollton Avenue, which has a median that is lined with palms for several kilometers." They also found an infected palm southeast of North Carrollton near Bayou St. John, more positives outside the Superdome on Poydras Street, in the Lower Ninth Ward and on St. Claude Avenue, and beyond Orleans Parish in Arabi and Metairie.

The researchers explained that the infection looks like it follows lines on a map because most of the palms they sampled stood in parks or roadside medians. Palms in private yards were generally left out for safety and legal reasons, though many in affected areas showed decline consistent with lethal bronzing. Palms in private yards near the infected corridors were mostly outside the survey, so the study's map shows where palms were tested, not every place the disease has reached.

In the survey, some palm species turned out to be much more vulnerable than others. These figures come from sampling done between September 2015 and May 2016, so they describe that survey and are not a current infection rate:

The two date palms, the species on the Great Lawn and on the Carrollton median, had the highest infection rates. The cabbage palm, which is native to the Southeast, was the exception. Only 12 of 264 sampled tested positive, and the authors suggested it could be "a more durable landscape choice" for replacing highly susceptible palms. A lower rate is not immunity. UF/IFAS lists cabbage palms among the affected hosts.

Two ways to handle a sick palm, and what each one costs

Once palms are exposed, the remaining decision comes down to money and time. In a 2023 article, NOLA.com quoted Raj Singh, director of LSU's Plant Diagnostic Center:

"Once a palm is infected, it can't be saved. Is the disease going to wipe out the palms in 10 or 15 years? I can't answer that, but there is no control for this disease."

The first option is treatment. The same NOLA.com article described the Downtown Development District's program on Canal Street as of 2023. A contractor injected the antibiotic oxytetracycline into the 230 palms between Claiborne Avenue and the riverfront for about $174 per tree, or roughly $40,000 a year. The district told the paper it hadn't lost a palm since the injections began in 2018. An arborist in the same article put the cost of treating a single tree at up to $1,200 a year and said the injections have to be repeated two or three times a year for the rest of the tree's life. Those figures date from 2023 and may have changed since.

The second option is removal. The 2023 article reported that the city parks department had removed 56 dead palms, mostly along Filmore and Almonaster avenues, and planned to take down at least 44 more, including in Dublin and Coliseum Square parks.

City Park tried treatment first. According to past managers quoted in the 2023 article, some of the park's more prominent palms had been treated at about $800 per tree per year. The Conservancy's own FAQ is clear about the limits. Antibiotic treatment "can help slow the disease's progression," but it "cannot eliminate the infection," and several Great Lawn palms died anyway. Treatment protects a palm that hasn't been infected yet. It can't cure one that already has been, and on the Great Lawn the disease had spread through the group.

What university extension services say about a palm at home

Because the disease follows streets and the insects travel, a Mid-City palm owner is dealing with the same biology the park is. The Conservancy says that removing infected palms "cannot eliminate the disease from the surrounding environment."

The university sources describe the symptoms in a consistent order. UF/IFAS says the first sign is usually fruit dropping early or flower clusters dying. Next, bronzing appears on the older, lower fronds and moves upward. When the spear leaf collapses, the palm's growing point has died. LSU's survey warns that appearance can mislead both ways. Some palms that looked sick tested negative, and some that looked fine were infected, so the researchers concluded that only a lab test can confirm the disease.

UF/IFAS advises contacting your local Extension office about a suspected palm, testing the palms nearby, removing any palm that tests positive and considering preventive injections for healthy neighbors. The LSU AgCenter recommends removing symptomatic palms that test positive, along with any palm whose spear leaf is dead. The Conservancy notes that live oaks and other broadleaf trees are not known to get the disease.

What comes next for the lawn and for Carrollton

The Conservancy hasn't promised to replant the promenades. It says any future planting on the Great Lawn will be decided under the City Park 2050 Plan, with "the long-term health and sustainability of the landscape" in mind. Anyone who wants to help pay for tree care in the park can give to the Conservancy's Tree Fund.

Up the street, the city's federally funded tree planting list includes 57 trees for North Carrollton Avenue between Lafitte and Canal. The program covers installations from spring 2025 through spring 2029, and the list is a set of targets, not a record of trees already planted.

If the gap on the lawn has you thinking about your own yard, the Pelican Greenhouse plant sale in City Park runs Saturday, November 7, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will carry Gulf Coast native plants along with annuals, perennials, tropicals, roses, succulents and houseplants.

Mature trees, and sometimes the absence of them, shape how a Mid-City home looks from the street. If a palm on a property you own or are considering has you wondering what it means for upkeep or presentation, Tricia King can walk through it with you and refer you to trusted local arborists. Let's Connect.