Awesome Live Oak in South Alabama

[Elmore]

Here are a couple of photos of a real nice and very large Live Oak - Quercus virginiana. It is located in Mobile, AL. Photos made in the winter of 2003.
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/Elmore/Live%20Oak/LargeLiveOakinMobileAL2003.jpg"width=550>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/Elmore/Live%20Oak/LargeLiveOakMobileAL2003.jpg"width=550>

 

[Toronado3800]

Nice pictures. Live Oaks are very impressive trees. I love the heavy branch structure. Do you know if they take kindly to pruning so people can mow under them? If they grew in zone six I might plant one.

It would be for future generations, but imagine a two hundred foot wide yard with one mature Live Oak on the south and a Ginko on the North!

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Originally posted by Toronado3800
Do you know if they take kindly to pruning so people can mow under them?

Live oaks are much better off if lower limbs are allowed to drape low, and even rest on the ground. Mulching unmowable areas makes for much easier and healthier mtc. than regularly raising the lower crown.

It makes for a much more attractive and valuable tree.

Water oaks grow in zone 6 and they can be trained to a live oak-ish shape.

 

[NeTree]

JMHO, but I LIKE the limbs on the ground for appearance. It makes the tree look like it's gonna hug you and let you play around like a kid again.

Down-to-earth as it were.

 

[MasterBlaster]

I used to have a trimming gig at an old Louisiana plantation... Ashton Plantation. They had dozens of 150+ old live oaks like that. One little dead limb in the top, and it HAD to come out!

They spent ungodly dollars on tree care.

And why wouldn't they?

 

[Guy Meilleur]

And limbs on the ground make climbing easy--a nonaluminum ladder!
O wait, no more freeclimbing. Dam ANSI, no fun no mo

 

[NeTree]

Who says you can't free climb it off the clock?

 

[Yellowdog]

How did it hold up to Ivan???

 

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

That's a really nice tree.

I have a red oak on my property that is 6 feet in diamiter. Unfortunatly it's not on the property where my house is on. I own a woodlot 3 miles down the road. It's a swamp actually, but the oak is on dry land beside hard maples right beside a public gravel road. It would be a nice place to build a house. Too bad it's one of the only a few public roads i know of with no electricity or hydro poles. It doeasn't have the sweeping low crown of the oak in the picture, but it's pretty round shaped. It believed to be 400 years old.

I planted some oaks near my house but they'll need at least a hundred years to be big.

 

[treebender]

my wife and i did the honeymoon thing in mobile, many nice live oaks there, i hope.