There are cities that ask you to look up. New York, of course. Tokyo, Paris, London. Then there are the cities that invite you to look out. The vistas are the party. Los Angeles is a looking-­out city. And when you do, what you see are trees.

The trees of Los Angeles may well be the most underrated reason to visit. “This is one of the most densely populated, diverse urban forests in the world,” said Bryan Vejar, the senior manager of arboricultural training and education at TreePeople, the oldest environmental nonprofit based in Southern California.

“We have nearly 500 different species of trees in greater Los Angeles,” said Vejar.

The trees of Los Angeles are as varied and storied as the city itself, and touring them is the cheapest way to take in its charms.

“Every neighborhood treats their trees differently,” said Nick Araya, a master arborist and founder of TreeCareLA, a tree management company. “In Laurel Canyon, it feels like the trees are in charge. But then there are places that are much more manicured. It’s very rare that a tree will start growing in Beverly Hills and be allowed to stay.”

Over 95% of the city’s trees are non-native. But no matter where they come from, they are good for the cityscape, providing cooling shade for people and habitat for birds and animals. “Trees can save Los Angeles if we let them,” said Araya.

Some of the most recognizable trees in Los Angeles, such as the California date palms and Mexican fan palms lining the iconic strip of North Beverly Drive are not the most helpful to the environment.

“You can’t have Los Angeles without palm trees,” said Araya. “But they have a small canopy and almost no shade. Most trees get bigger and better as they age — palms just go up. And they’re invasive.” In case it wasn’t clear: “I’m not a fan.”

Exploring the city through its arboreal citizens, as I did with Araya, offers a new take on some of its classic neighborhoods.

Hancock Park

Park in Larchmont Village — lined with boutiques, cafes and a farmers market (open every Wednesday and Sunday) — a perfect base as you head into Hancock Park. Go to Irving Boulevard and West Second Street. Araya and I stood on the corner of the residential neighborhood as he clicked his laser pointer on massive Deodar cedars across the street. Left alone, a Deodar cedar looks like a weeping pine tree — its silhouette is often a lopsided triangle, not unlike the Sorting Hat in the “Harry Potter” series.

“This is a really interesting intersection because you can see half a dozen Deodar cedars with different management styles,” Araya said. “One is pruned to have pompoms, some pruned to look natural, some left totally alone. Deodar cedars come from the Himalayas — the highest elevation in the world. And here they are practically at sea level. That’s how resilient they are.”

Deodar cedars have been growing well in Hancock Park since they were brought in almost 100 years ago. A hawk swooped down from the tree we were looking at.

“The tops of these trees don’t come to a point so they provide the perfect perch for predatory birds,” he said. “What makes the Deodar cedar so special is that we have an agreed-upon communal contract for the most part not to disrupt them. People don’t top them.”

Topping trees — excessively pruning the branches — is uniquely popular in Los Angeles, Araya explained, in part because people worry about the liability of having branches fall on a parked car and in part because they love sunshine.

We walked a block to West Second Street and South Windsor Boulevard, home to a carob tree with gloriously thick sweeping branches low to the ground and enough shade for a small village. Carob trees are originally from North Africa and the Mediterranean, “and they make a lot of shade and attract birds and squirrels so a lot of cities planted them,” Araya explained. “This one is probably 100 years old.”

Araya took this moment to talk about the irony of sprinklers.

“We are obsessed with our lawns in Los Angeles,” he said, explaining that sprinklers hit the trunk of the tree and people assume that watering a tree would be beneficial. But in fact, hitting the base of a tree with water in the same place year after year leads to rot and fungus growth.

We made our way down Second Street to Norton Avenue, a wide street lined with Canary Island date palms — thicker and shorter than the famously long, skinny Mexican fan palms all over Los Angeles — and the sound of parrots. Canary Island date palms were planted in Hancock Park and Beverly Hills in the 1920s and 1930s.

They are a habitat for wildlife, Araya said, and their canopy can be huge, around 50 feet wide, providing much-needed shade in Los Angeles.

Hancock Park has no shortage of pear trees, olive trees, California sycamores (also known as a Western sycamore) and magnolias.

Laurel Canyon

On your way up to Laurel Canyon, drive on North Detroit Street. On the west side of the street between Clinton and Melrose, you’ll pass a spectacular Ficus religiosa, its hundreds of thousands of heart-shaped leaves gracefully dangling over the street.

“This is the same kind of tree that the Buddha sat underneath when he found enlightenment,” said Araya, who is also married to a board-certified master arborist. “This is my wife’s favorite tree in Los Angeles.”

We continued our drive up into the hills.

As flora life goes, Laurel Canyon is chaos: 130-foot-tall Canary Island pines, native California bay laurels (the source of the neighborhood’s name) and coast live oaks, Aleppo pines from Syria, giant eucalyptus originally from Australia — all growing up and out in every direction, branches resting on utility lines, massive trunks leaning into rooftops. There is nothing manicured about Laurel Canyon — the landscape is wild and the scale is humbling.

You get the sense that the trees run things here; the people just try to stay out of their way. “It’s a slice of what this part of the world would look like if we humans hadn’t colonized the area,” Vejar later told me.

The best way to take in the trees of Laurel Canyon is probably by car — roads are steep and curvy and sidewalks are scarce.

To get a better look at the biodiversity of the area, drive up Laurel Canyon Boulevard (parts of Mulholland Drive are temporarily closed) to TreePeople’s headquarters. Their 45 acres of wilderness and miles of trails are open to the public and one of the best ways to take in the biodiversity Vejar talks about.

Beverly Hills

There is perhaps no other neighborhood in Los Angeles in which trees are as much of a status symbol as in Beverly Hills.

“Beverly Hills has the advantage of money to maintain the trees,” said Araya, indicating some well-appointed front yards. “They like the attention grabbers here: magnolias because their blooms are so well known, Japanese flowering pears, and of course, olive trees often shipped down from Napa.”

We make our way down Alpine Drive, a manicured residential stretch lined with ash trees. Araya shakes his head.

“The emerald ash borer is wiping out ash trees all over the country, but not here,” he said, explaining that the insect hasn’t made its way to Southern California and it may never come. “These ash trees are absolutely thriving. People don’t know how lucky they are here on Alpine Drive.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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