That's awesome.

Live oaks are just incredible trees

My guess is 700 - 1000 years old. I am no expert. I am just comparing it to a 600 year old Treaty oak in Austin.

That is simply amazing. I would love to walk under and around it

Magnificent.

That is neat as can be.

Stunning. What a gorgeous tree and area! Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful! The whole area is lovely.

Thanks for that Mara - always humbling, innit?

He has been in this garden for about 30 years and the palms he has introduced in layers through the years create such an amazing effect up in the canopy.. The owner is the right man to watch over this tree. He has been involved with the ecological preservation in the state.

I love the dance of the branches of the younger trees. That is the stuff of ballets. The leaves are just now budding out , so the shade is still a light yellow infused shade.

Live oaks are so changeable. They are so much smaller where I am .... Water and dirt is doled out with a tighter hand around where I am. San Antonio is much lower in elevation and it is at the point where the karst of the hills dumps its treasure. There are springs coming up all along the edge of the Balcones fault that separates the hills from the coastal plains. The trees get bigger in a hurry as you drop down out of the hills.

Is that a log supporting that branch or is that part of the tree?

I think that is an artificial support. A wind storm might have damaged it or he is trying to train the branch up from going on the ground.

wow!

Yep, that is awesome. Thanks for posting a beauty!

Speaking of supports, we had a gentleman from Hong Kong at an arborist's workshop a couple years ago. He had slides of tree scenes in the far east. Suffice to say, they do things in that part of the world you would never see elsewhere, including supports, struts, odd hanging appendages, all to "hold up" tree limbs in crazy configurations. Reminded me of either a Dr. Suess book or something out of Salvador Dali. They also appear to have much greater tolerance for tree roots and the swollen bases of trees to grow out and over concrete infrastructure, something that would never fly where I live. Very interesting stuff.

I used to love the iron gates that they had around trees in Philadelphia's old side of town. The trees would swallow them in stages. I bet they give the tree removal guys a real pain in the neck.

Poor guy had 30 minutes of 3" hail the other night. Its a mess today.