The John Knox Live Oak

The crown is the thing. Forty metres across, on a trunk 625 centimetres round and a tree only twenty three metres tall, which is the live oak habit taken to its conclusion: this species does not race upward, it spreads until the branches come back down to meet you. The Texas A&M Forest Service measured it in March 2026, so those are current numbers rather than remembered ones. It stands on the front lawn of a Presbyterian church on Gessner Road, in a part of Spring Branch that was farmland when the congregation broke ground in 1961. The church's own history mentions picnics held under the big trees at the front of the property, which is roughly what a tree this shape is for. No age has been published. Live oaks are difficult to date without coring and nobody appears to have done it. What can be said is that a live oak reaching six metres of girth in a climate like this one has had a long time and a lot of water, and that it was clearly here before the church was. The grounds are open, and a churchyard has never been a bad place to stand and look up.