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Quercus virginiana
Also called Southern Live Oak, Virginia Live Oak
Southern live oak is a large, long-lived, semi-evergreen oak native to the southeastern US coast, grown as a shade and specimen tree. It grows fast with ample moisture and needs only occasional watering once established.
Quercus virginiana, also known as the southern live oak, is an semi-evergreen oak tree native to the Southeastern United States Coastal Plain. Though many other species are loosely called live oak, the southern live oak is particularly iconic of the Old South. Many very large and old specimens of live oak can be found today in the Deep South region of the United States. Although it does not grow extremely high, it has a massive canopy: the greatest identified extant oak, in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, has only a 68 foot (20.7 m) tall trunk, but its arboreal cover spreads over a range of 139 feet (42.4 m).
Southern live oak is cultivated in warmer climates as a specimen tree or for shade in the southern United States (zone 8 and south), Nuevo León and Tamaulipas states in Mexico, and in the warmer parts of the United States, Europe, and Australia. Cultivation is relatively simple, as southern live oak seedlings grow fast with ample soil moisture. Planting depth has little effect on the success of the tree. After a few years live oak needs only occasional supplemental water. Southern live oak is very long lived, and there are many specimens that are more than 400 years old in the deep southern United States. The southern live oak is reliably hardy to USDA Hardiness Zone 8a, which places its northern limit for long-term cultivation inland around Atlanta, Memphis, and Washington, D.C.
Live oak can be found in the wild growing and reproducing on the lower coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico and lower East Coast of the United States. Its native range begins in southeast Virginia, and then continues south in a narrow band through North Carolina along the coast to the interior South Carolina coast, where its range begins to expand farther inland. The range of live oak continues to expand inland as it moves south, growing across southern Georgia and covering all of Florida south to the northernmost Florida Keys. Live oak grows along the Florida panhandle to Mobile Bay, then westward across the southernmost two tiers of counties in Mississippi. Live oak grows across the southern third of Louisiana, except for some barrier islands and scattered parts of the most southern parishes. Live oak's range continues into Texas and narrows to hug the coast until just past Port Lavaca, Texas.
Live oak wood is hard, heavy, and difficult to work with, but very strong. In the days of wooden ships, live oaks were the preferred source of the framework timbers of the ship, using the natural trunk and branch angles for their strength. The frame of USS Constitution was constructed from southern live oak wood harvested from St. Simons Island, Georgia, and the density of the wood grain allowed it to survive cannon fire, thus earning her the nickname "Old Ironsides". Even today, the U.S. Navy continues to own extensive live oak tracts.
Quercus affinis · Coast Live Oak · White Oak · Golden Oak · Scrub oak · Brant's oak · Turkey Oak · Canyon Live Oak · Scarlet Oak · Daimyo oak · Blue oak · Leather oak
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Quercus virginiana by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
