Zen and the Art of Palm Maintenance

I've never thought too much about palm trees until recently. On the five minute walk between the train station and my office I pass roughly 75 palm trees (no, I've never counted them, and I'm not going to). Recently, a crew has been doing maintenance on them. I never realized that palm trees needed to be maintained, particularly with such big machinery.



It makes sense that you should cut off the dead fronds, lest you end up with a tree like this:


But what surprised me was the workers striping the old remains of the fronds off. Here are before and after photos:



I don't see what the purpose of this is, other than to create a more manicured look. Personally, I prefer the "before" look to the "after" look. Anyone else agree, or is this just evidence of my preference for all things scruffy?