The puzzle of this oak is where it stands: in a narrow walkway between graves, halfway up a slope at the back of Glenwood Cemetery. Planting a live oak in a path that skinny would be an odd choice, which is why historians quoted by the Houston Chronicle in 2010 suspected the tree was here first, growing on its own before anyone was buried around it. If they are right, every grave in that row arrived after the oak did. Glenwood itself calls it perhaps its most notable tree, aptly named The Cemetery Oak, and that is saying something. The same grounds hold two Harris County champion trees, a mockernut hickory on East Avenue and an eastern red cedar in Section C-3, and the cemetery still puts the oak above both. Its age is an estimate. In the Chronicle's account a landscape architect put it at about 130 years, judging from its size and from a 1930 aerial photograph, which would start it around 1880. A 2013 photo caption says only well over a hundred years. Take a century to two as the honest band. The same piece described the trunk as wide as a Volkswagen, but nobody has published a tape measurement we could check. Our pin marks the cemetery, not the tree, and the grounds cover 88 acres. Head for the back and look halfway up the slope. If you measure the girth, tell us.
long green catkins hang just as the old leaves drop and the new ones come insmall dark acorns on long stalks
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Glenwood Cemetery, 2525 Washington Ave, Houston, TX 77007 (in the back of the cemetery, halfway up the slope)You can recognise it by its trunk, once described as wide as a Volkswagen, rising from a narrow walkway between graves. It stands at the back of Glenwood Cemetery, halfway up the slope.
Free; the cemetery is open daily, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It is a working cemetery with its own rules, and photography is restricted unless the cemetery has authorised it, so check those rules before you take pictures.
Washington Ave corridor; METRO bus along Washington Ave; walk time from a stop not verified
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.