Trees and Road Supports

I will share a couple of examples of odd things I see when out and about. One day while sitting in traffic, I noticed a large tree growing right out of the roadway itself. It was not a major thoroughfare, but still heavily used. I investigated further and could see multiple trees all growing out of the road. Hmmm. There were quite a few of these mysterious trees all along this one section of road. My driver told me he's seen it before but he couldn't explain it anymore than I could.  One guess I have is that the homeowners on the street got together and somehow prevented the trees from being cut down. Instead, they were just paved around and that has continued with all subsequent pavings. Any guesses from the readers?

Here's another odd thing: shrink-wrapped elevated road supports??? They are building several elevated roadways. The construction has been going on for quite some time. One day, suddenly, nearly all of the road supports in one area were all wrapped in plastic wrap at the bottom. Why? To help prevent graffiti? I ruled out any attempt to keep the concrete moist during curing because these are not newly built. Any guesses?

Creativity is encouraged when proposing reasons for these two oddities.