THEY are the city’s best-loved symbol, as iconic as the Hollywood sign, as ever-present as the automobile. But Los Angeles may soon look very different as the towering palm trees lining its streets begin to vanish. One by one, the palms are dying off, of old age and an incurable fungus spread through the soil that they are planted in.

The palm tree is an even more apt symbol of the city than many Angelenos realise. Like the millions that came here seeking fame and fortune, or just a better life, the palm tree is also an immigrant, brought to California more than two centuries ago from Mexico and beyond.

Missionaries brought date palms from Spain in 1769 and a fruit industry built on seedlings from Algeria, Egypt and Iraq grew up in the late 1900s. The earliest street palms were planted by pioneers passing through the Californian desert.

In the Twenties, the Canary Island date palm became the palm of choice for the affluent. The trees became so intertwined with the image of Los Angeles that Neil Diamond once sang of it as the city where “palm trees grow and rents are low.”

In the past decade, a fungal disease, fusarium wilt, has killed an estimated 500 of Beverly Hills’s mighty Canary Island date palms, leaving only 1,000 standing. Tree surgeons have no idea how to rid the soil of the fungus and replacing them with others that would simply fall prey to the disease would be pointless.

The tall thin palms are also all but useless at providing shade and absorbing the emissions that blanket the city in smog. A plan to cover Los Angeles in a million more trees over the next decade does not include any palms, native oaks and sycamores being favoured for their broader canopies.

Beside that, there is the cost. Las Vegas casinos have driven the market beyond the reach of the municipal purses, paying up to $7,500 (£4,000) per specimen. And the remaining palms are nearing the end of their 100-plus-years lifespan.

The city may have all but given up on its palm trees but Angelenos have not. “LA without palms?” said Manuel Rodriguez, a gardener on the palm-lined Beachwood Drive. “It’ll never happen. People won’t let it. There’s enough money here to save the trees and they’ll spend it, I’m certain.”

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