The McDonogh Oak

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.