What is the oldest tree in Miami?
The oldest trees on this page are the Garden Mound Oaks at Vizcaya, four southern live oaks that Vizcaya's own label calls 200 years old, though a caption on the same page says 100. They were already large when they were moved onto an artificial hill built for James Deering between 1914 and 1922, so somewhere between one century and two is the honest range.
No tree on this page has been dated from its wood. The live oaks on Vizcaya's Garden Mound carry two ages from the same institution, 200 years on the mound's label and 100 in a video caption, and nobody has published a girth that would settle it. The estate's surviving Cuban royal palm is about a century old, worked out from the palm deliveries of 1916 to 1921 rather than measured. The champions are ranked by the Florida Forest Service on size, not years: the redberry stopper at Vizcaya, the paradise tree in Simpson Park, and the false mastic in Castellow Hammock near Homestead, which was thought lost in Hurricane Andrew and found alive in 1995. None has an age. Nor do the baobab in Collins Park, Miami Beach, or the Merrick fig in Coral Gables, which is on the map for the plantation post in its roots rather than its size. Vizcaya and Simpson Park are about two kilometres apart, and Vizcaya Metrorail station is about 500 metres from Vizcaya's entrance. If you know how old any of them is, tell us.
One of Miami's trees also appears in The Tallest Trees We Have Measured.