What is the oldest tree in Savannah?
The oldest tree in Savannah is the Candler Oak, a southern live oak at 516 Drayton Street in the Historic District, directly beside Forsyth Park, estimated at somewhere between 300 and 450 years. It is free to see from the public sidewalk; the Savannah Tree Foundation fences its root zone, so you look at it from outside the fence rather than walking up to the trunk. The Wormsloe oak avenue is younger by centuries, planted in the 1890s rather than the 1730s when the estate behind it was founded. A third tree, the Majestic Oak in a residential cul-de-sac on the Isle of Hope, is wider than the Candler Oak but not clearly older: its own plaque and a travel writer both put it at 300 to 400 years, inside the same range Candler occupies.
The Candler Oak's age is the softest fact on this page and worth saying so plainly. Wikipedia gives 350 to 450 years in one place and describes the tree as growing since the 1700s in another, while the Savannah Tree Foundation, which has managed it for forty five years, says it is thought to be over 300. Neither figure comes from a core sample or from a girth-and-growth-rate calculation. They are estimates that have been repeated rather than derived, and live oak ages are overstated more often than not, so treat the top of the range with more caution than the bottom. What has been measured holds up better: the trunk is 17 feet round and the tree stands about 16 and a half metres, and the two published figures for circumference and diameter agree with each other to within rounding. The Wormsloe avenue is the opposite case, an age nobody needs to estimate. Two sources put its planting in the 1890s, by a Jones descendant rather than by the family that founded the plantation in the 1730s, which makes those oaks about 130 years old.
One of Savannah's trees also appears in The Oldest Tree in Every City We Map.