Three of these four stand within six hundred metres of each other in City Park, on a strip between City Park Avenue and Bayou Metairie that never flooded, not even in 2005. The bayou spent centuries dropping silt and raised the land a metre above the rest of the park, which is why the city's oldest live oaks are the ones on the high ground. Two are reckoned between seven and nine hundred years old and one stands on wooden crutches. The fourth is uptown by the zoo, and joined a society whose members are all trees in 1934.
0 of 4 visited in New Orleans
1
The McDonogh Oak
Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · 700 to 800 years, and by some accounts up to 900 · City Park
The branches are too heavy for the tree now, so they rest on wooden crutches. That is the first thing you notice and the whole story in one image: a crown about forty six metres across on a trunk of eight metres, held up because nobody is willing to cut it back.
City Park reckons it at seven to eight hundred years, which puts its first century somewhere around the time the Choctaw were the only people here and five hundred years before the French arrived. It lost a major limb in 1981, which is why there is a cement patch as well as the props.
The reason it is still standing is geological rather than lucky. The Old Grove sits on the strip between City Park Avenue and Bayou Metairie, and the bayou spent centuries overflowing and dropping silt, which raised this ground about a metre above the rest of the park. When the levees failed in 2005 and most of City Park went under, the Old Grove stayed dry.
There is a plaque at the foot of the trunk. It is a considerable understatement.
Read more and get directions →
2
The Anseman Oak
Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · somewhere between 500 and 900 years · City Park
Victor Anseman was a florist who retired and then gave the last fifteen years of his life to a park. In 1891 he pulled together the business and political people of the city into the City Park Improvement Association, which is the reason there is a park here at all rather than a subdivision. He died in 1904 and they named this oak after him.
It is a good choice of monument. The tree is given the same range as the McDonogh Oak, five hundred to nine hundred years, and some accounts make it the older of the two. Neither has been cored, so the order between them is a matter of who is doing the estimating.
It stands at the western end of the same high strip of ground, just inside the entrance that also carries his name. The pin here marks the entrance rather than the trunk, because the grove holds hundreds of old oaks and pretending to know which metre is the one would be a promise this page cannot keep. Walk in from City Park Avenue opposite North Alexander and look for the biggest thing standing.
Read more and get directions →
3
The Dueling Oak
Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · about 300 years · City Park
Between 1834 and 1844 there were stretches when scarcely a day passed without a duel being fought under these trees. Creole New Orleans settled its arguments here with swords and pistols, over insults, politics, cards and women, and the oaks were the address everyone understood without being told.
There were two. A hurricane took one in 1949 and the other is still standing, roughly three hundred years old, twenty one metres tall on a trunk seven and a half metres round.
What makes it worth the walk now is the contrast rather than the gore. The tree stands where Dueling Oaks Drive meets Dreyfous Drive, which puts it a few steps from the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and the art museum. So the spot where men shot each other over remarks at dinner is now the quietest corner of the park, full of people looking at bronze.
The pin marks the junction rather than the trunk. You will not need it: there is only one oak there with a story attached.
Read more and get directions →
4
The Tree of Life
Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · about 285 years, from a planting date of around 1740 · Uptown
Eleven metres round, eighteen tall, and a crown reaching close to fifty metres across, which means the limbs left the trunk, ran horizontally as far as they could, and then came back down to the grass. That is why this is the most climbed and most photographed tree in Louisiana: it invites you up without asking you to be able to climb.
The sign by it gives a planting date of around 1740. A better story says Etienne de Bore, the first mayor of New Orleans and the man who worked out how to granulate sugar commercially, planted it in 1771 as a wedding present for his wife. That version is tradition rather than record, and it has the wrong decade, but it has stuck hard enough that the tree carries his name as often as its other one.
In 1934 it became one of the forty three founding members of the Live Oak Society, an organisation whose members are all trees and whose only human is a secretary who keeps the roll.
It stands outside the zoo fence, so you do not need a ticket. The giraffes are on the other side.
Read more and get directions →