Jane Ellen's Tree

Houston is younger than this tree, probably by the better part of a century. The Heritage Society, which manages Sam Houston Park, puts the oak at 250 to 300 years old. That is an arborist's estimate rather than a ring count, and nobody has published a girth to check it against, but even the low end has it growing here before the city was founded in 1836. It is a southern live oak grown the way the species grows when it is left alone: sprawling rather than tall, with massive limbs that reach out and then down until they nearly meet the ground. The towers of downtown stand a few blocks away. The oak was already old when the frontier town became a cotton port, and older still when the oil money arrived and built the skyline behind it. The name is recent. The society called it Jane Ellen's Tree, after Jane Ellen, its first female executive director, so it honours the person who looked after the ground rather than anyone who owned it. Do not confuse it with the other live oak that made the news in this park. In February 2026 Trees for Houston planted its one-millionth tree here, a young live oak beside the Kellum-Noble House. It has a long future ahead of it. This one has the past. Our pin marks the park, not the trunk, so expect to look around. Look for the limbs that come down to meet you.