Late Monday afternoon we approached the city on our incoming from a weekend visiting friends and shooting a wedding in Amherst and Boston, respectively. Traffic came to a slow crawl about 30 miles out on the Hutchinson Parkway leading up to the Whitestone Bridge and we sat in the air-condition-less car, hoping for reprieve. We stared out at the evergreens and maples lining the left side of the highway, and noticed one strange and exceptional pine tree standing at least 30 feet above the others. I did a double-take, amazed by this wondrous! spectacle! of! plant!, so much taller and standing singular-in-species in the otherwise monotonous field of green. I remarked on the oddity to Jacob, who from the driver’s seat started to laugh…and laugh…and introduce me to the wonder that is cell phone trees.
Cell phone trees are fake trees that mimic real trees to mask cell phone towers. They are made, and placed (usually) with attention to regional tree growth, so in the Pacific Northwest you find many Douglas Fir cell trees, in the San Diego area you find broad-leafed, evergreen angiosperm tree varieties like the magnolia or avocado, and in the Northeast, you would fine short-needled pine cell trees. It has been suggested that there are 128,000 of these fake trees across the United States, which survive in any soil type, and are often un-discernible from the trees surrounding them. Church steeples, flag poles, and water towers also serve as common disguising zones for cell towers.
I’m have to admit I’m impressed by the effort exerted on part of cell phone companies to mask their trail.
N.B. [cell-phone tree art edition]
1. John Hogan Brighton’s Cell Trees
2. Cellular Phone Trees on Polar inertia
