| Florida Co-Champion
| Live Oak Quercus virginiana var. virginiana Beech Family — Oak Genus "The Cellon Oak" LaCrosse, Alachua County, Florida Circumference = 360 inches (30 feet)
|
The Live Oak, also called Evergreen Oak, is a large, spreading tree of the white oak group, with short, broad trunk buttressed at the base, forking into nearly horizontal, long branches, and very broad, spreading, dense crown. It is common to the lower Coastal Plain from southeast Virginia south to southern Florida, and west to southern Texas, southwest Oklahoma and northeast Mexico. It normally grows in low, sandy soils near the coast, but also occurs in moist, rich woods and along stream banks.
The Cellon Live Oak was named for its former owner, Ralph W. Cellon, and now sits in Cellon Oak Park, owned by Alachua County, three miles south of LaCrosse, Florida.
This handsome tree is popular throughout the Southeast as a shade tree. On the Gulf Coast, live oaks often support many types of epiphytic plants, including Spanish moss, which hangs in weeping festoons. Live oak is usually found growing in association with several other hardwoods, including winter oak, laurel oak, sweetgum, southern magnolia, and American holly. Live Oaks are often planted in cities, but should be restricted to large yards or parks where their wide-spreading form can be accomodated.
A fast-growing tree, the live oak flowers in early spring (usually in March or April), and the acorns mature in September or October. Sweet edible acorns are usually produced in great abundance, and are of great value to many birds and mammals, including wild turkeys, wood ducks, jays, quail, whitetail deer, raccoons, and squirrels.
The yellowish-brown wood is hard, heavy, tough, strong, and is used for structural beams, ship building, posts, and in places requiring strength and durability. The nation's first publicly-owned timber lands were purchased in 1799 to preserve these trees for use in shipbuilding. It ranks as the heaviest native hardwood, weighing 55 pounds per cubic foot when air dry. This weight (density of mass) makes the live oak the premier fuel wood.
The National Champion Live Oak (527 points) is in Louisiana.
IdentificationSize: medium-size tree 40 to 50 feet high, up to 70 feet high with wide-spreading, rounded crown; trunk 2 to 4 foot diameter.
Range: coastal areas from southeast Virginia south to southern Florida, and west to southeast Texas.
Habitat is low, sandy areas near the coast, including dunes and ridges near marshes, but also moist, rich woods and along streams; often in pure stands.
Leaves are alternate, evergreen, thick, leathery, elliptical and oblong, 1.5 to 5 inches long, .4 to 2.5 inches wide, dark green and shiny above, pale and hairy underneath, edges usually straight and slightly rolled under, variable in shape, widest near or above the middle to uniformly broad, tapering to rounded at the base, rounded to short-pointed at the tip, usually entire or slightly wavy along the margin, occasionally with a few teeth; shedding after new leaves appear in spring.
Flowers appear early in spring, male and female in separate catkins, on branchlets of the current year; male flowers custered on hanging, hairy catkins 2 to 3 inches long
Fruit is an acorn, green becoming dark brown, shiny, sweet, edible, maturing in one season on current year's branchlets, solitary to few-clustered, stalked, 5/8 to one inch long, broadest at the base to almost uniformly wide, rounded to pointed at the tip; cup enclosing one-fourth of the nut, .6 to .8 inch across, scales thin, overlapping, broadest at base, pointed at tip, covered with dense hairs
Bark is thick, .5 to one inch, dark brown to dark reddish-brown, shallow to deeply furrowed, forming small, closely pressed, squarish scales
Branches are stout, spreading; branchlets slender, hairy when young, becoming smooth and gray to brown with age
Twigs are hairless, rarely gray-hairy
Buds are terminal, small (.1 to .2 inches long), hairless, blunt, not angled; globe-shaped to widest near the base, covered with overlapping light, chestnut-brown scales
Wood is yellowish-brown, hard, heavy, tough, strong, and used for structural beams, ship building, posts
Similar Species: Any kind of evergreen oak may be called a "live oak," including Texas Live Oak, Coast Live Oak, Sand Live Oak
CultureSoils:
Seedlings:
Saplings:
Special:
Problems:
Cultivars:
Related Species: Texas Live Oak, Coast Live Oak, Sand Live Oak