Seven sets of wind chimes hang in this oak, the longest of them over four metres, and they are tuned so that the wind cannot play a wrong note. The scale is pentatonic, the five notes behind West African music, early jazz and gospel, which in this city is a deliberate choice rather than a musical convenience. They are painted black to disappear into the shadow of the branches, so most people hear the tree a while before they find it. The chimes are Jim Hart's, hung as part of the Big Lake project that rebuilt this corner of the park after 2005. The oak itself is reckoned at about 125 years, which makes it the youngest tree we map in New Orleans by four centuries. It earns the walk the way a live oak does: a low wide crown reaching out over the grass on the lake's east side, with enough shade under it for an afternoon. A plaque at the foot asks the wind to bring you a melody, a smile and a sense of peace and nature. Nobody has published a girth for it, so if you carry a tape measure, we would like the number.
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Getting there
City Park, east side of Big Lake, a short walk from the New Orleans Museum of Art
You can recognise it by the wind chimes hanging in its branches, seven sets of them, all painted black and the longest over four metres. It is the tree you can hear, on the east side of Big Lake.
City Park, beside the New Orleans Museum of Art. Canal Streetcar to City Park / Museum, then five minutes northwest to Big Lake.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
