Native trees for the Gulf Coast: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and East Texas

Live oak, southern magnolia and yaupon stand the salt wind of the Gulf Coast. Bald cypress, water tupelo and overcup oak stand the floods of the river swamps and the Mississippi Delta. Inland, chinquapin oak and Shumard oak take the alkaline clay of the Black Belt. Longleaf pine and bluejack oak take the acid sand of the Piney Woods. Plant while the trees are dormant, from fall through winter, when their roots keep growing. This guide covers Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and East Texas.

Zones, winter chill and when to plant

On the state maps of the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the region runs from zone 7b to 11b:

The coldest ground, 7b, lies in the hills of north Alabama and north Mississippi, and the warmest, 11b, in the Florida Keys. East Texas runs from 8a along the Red River to 10a on Galveston Island. Florida’s Panhandle is mostly 9a, and the peninsula warms from 9a at Gainesville to 11a at Miami.

A zone measures only the average coldest night of winter. Pecan buds also need enough cold to end their rest, their chilling requirement, and how much depends on the tree’s genes as well as the weather. The pecan we grow is a northern strain from Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, and no source gives the chill it needs on the Gulf. For pawpaw, the coast itself is the limit:

“Pawpaws grow wild over a wide range of latitude, from the Gulf Coastal plain to southern Michigan. However, the trees may not receive adequate chilling hours if planted too close to the Gulf Coast.” (Kentucky State University, Pawpaw Planting Guide)

American persimmon grows wild to southern Florida and is exceedingly common across the Gulf States.

Winter planting gives the roots a head start:

“Planting during December, January and February provides plants with several months to develop a strong root system before they put out a new flush of leaves and flowers in spring.” (LSU AgCenter, The best time to plant a tree is now)

Magnolias and pawpaw, with fleshy roots, wait for late winter or early spring. Blue Whale Trees ships live plants from February to May and in October and November, and holds other orders for the next window.

The coast: salt spray and sand

Live oak stands salt spray better than any other broadleaf tree of its coast, so it rules the barrier islands. On the Texas coast, the prairies carry live oak woodlands and scattered oak mottes. Behind the beaches, myrtle oak thickets steady the dunes against storms. For a yard in reach of the spray, these take salt:

• Live oak, whose low crown spreads 60 to 100 feet and can live 500 years or more. Zones 7 to 10, 40 to 80 feet.
• Southern magnolia, which stands salt spray but not standing water. Zones 6 to 10, 60 to 80 feet.
• Yaupon, an evergreen holly planted on dunes because it survives salt spray and steady wind. Zones 7 to 9, 10 to 25 feet.
• Myrtle oak, an evergreen scrub oak, most abundant on the islands off Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Zones 7 to 10, 15 to 40 feet.
• Redbay, a spicy-leaved evergreen that takes salt spray and occasional floods. Zones 7 to 10, 30 to 60 feet.
• Sand pine, the scrub pine of Florida’s dry white sand, which stands salt spray. Zones 7 to 10, 25 to 40 feet.
• Carolina laurelcherry, a fast evergreen screen that takes some salt wind but not direct spray. Zones 7 to 10, 15 to 40 feet.

We do not grow wax myrtle, another native of the coastal plain.

Trees that stand hurricanes

A University of Florida team measured 18,200 trees in 100 neighborhoods after eight hurricanes from 1995 to 2005. With ratings from 85 arborists, foresters and scientists, it sorted the coastal plain’s trees into four groups by wind resistance.

Live oak, southern magnolia, bald cypress and pond cypress sit in the highest group. Yaupon and the other native hollies join them. So do three trees of dry sand: turkey oak, myrtle oak and farkleberry. The lowest group holds pecan, southern red oak and water oak. Sand pine, spruce pine and Carolina laurelcherry sit there as well. So does the study’s laurel oak, Quercus laurifolia. The laurel oak we grow is Quercus hemisphaerica, which grows fast but is short lived and prone to rot as it ages.

At 145 and 165 miles an hour, in Hurricanes Charley and Andrew, live oak’s survival fell to 78 percent. No tree is safe in every storm:

“These lists should be used with caution, with the knowledge that no species and no trees are completely windproof.” (UF/IFAS Extension, Selecting Coastal Plain Species for Wind Resistance)

Large trees lost the most branches, so give big ones room: live oak 50 feet from a wall and southern magnolia 25 feet. The site check tests a live oak at 50 feet.

River swamps and the Delta

In the river swamps, water covers the wet ground through much of the growing season:

• Bald cypress, which grows in standing water yet suits a dry lawn, though its needles yellow on limestone. Zones 4 to 10, 50 to 80 feet.
• Pond cypress, the cypress of ponds and blackwater rivers, adapted to poorer, more acid water. Zones 5 to 10, 30 to 70 feet.
• Water tupelo, whose base swells like a bottle in sloughs where floods can stand 20 feet deep. Zones 6 to 10, 60 to 100 feet.
• Water elm, or planertree, whose roots flare into buttresses in wet ground. Zones 6 to 9, 30 to 40 feet.

On the Delta’s clay flats, water stands in winter and the clay cracks in summer:

• Overcup oak, which stands in floodwater for months and then takes a dry summer. Zones 5 to 9, 40 to 60 feet.
• Nuttall oak, a fast red oak of flats under 3 to 8 inches of winter water, with acorn crops that rarely fail. Zones 5 to 9, 50 to 80 feet.
• Delta post oak, for clay flats that flood in winter and bake in summer. Zones 7 to 9, 60 to 80 feet.
• Water hickory, the tallest hickory, for clay that floods in spring and cracks in summer. Zones 5 to 10, 80 to 100 feet.
• Pecan, for the better-drained ridges, since water hickory replaces it on poorly drained clay flats. Zones 5 to 9, 70 to 100 feet.
• Western mayhaw, a hawthorn most common in Louisiana, whose May fruit makes jelly. Zones 6 to 9, 20 to 30 feet.

Bald cypress also goes out in the Wet Spot Pack, six natives for wet ground, hardy together in zones 5 to 8. The same oaks fit the Delta’s Arkansas end, and the hills west of it are in native trees for the Ozarks.

The Black Belt and the Piney Woods

The Black Belt

The Black Belt is a band of dark clay through central Alabama that curves up into northeastern Mississippi. The clay lies over a soft limestone, the Selma chalk, and it holds Alabama’s only wide stretch of alkaline soil. Most of it drains poorly. These take alkaline clay:

• Chinquapin oak, the oak of limestone bluffs and glades, at home at a pH of about 6.5 to 8. Zones 3 to 8, 40 to 60 feet.
• Shumard oak, a big red oak little troubled by the yellowing alkaline soil causes in many oaks. Zones 5 to 9, 50 to 80 feet.
• Durand oak, a tall oak of near-neutral or limy soil that takes ground wet for part of the year. Zones 5 to 9, 50 to 75 feet.
• Kentucky coffeetree, which takes drought, alkaline soil and compaction. Zones 3 to 8, 60 to 80 feet.

Bald cypress, pond cypress, sweetbay and laurel oak yellow on alkaline soil. They belong on acid ground.

The Piney Woods and the sandhills

In East Texas the Piney Woods roll under pines and oaks on acid gray sands, and the same forest runs into Louisiana. Longleaf pine grows wild on sandhills, flatwoods and savannas from there to Florida:

• Longleaf pine, which spends 2 to 15 years in a grass stage while its taproot grows. Zones 7 to 10, 60 to 120 feet.
• Bluejack oak, a small red oak of deep sand whose acorns fox squirrels favor. Zones 6 to 9, 20 to 40 feet.
• Turkey oak, the oak of the driest sandhills, west to southeast Louisiana. Zones 7 to 9, 20 to 50 feet.
• Sand post oak, compact and built for drought and heat. Zones 6 to 9, 15 to 40 feet.
• Southern red oak, shade for poor, worn sand or clay. Zones 6 to 9, 60 to 80 feet.
• Farkleberry, the tree of the blueberry genus, for dry sand or rock. Zones 6 to 10, 10 to 25 feet.

We do not grow loblolly, slash or shortleaf pine.

The Florida peninsula

South of Gainesville the zones climb to 11a at Miami and 11b in the Keys, and the catalog thins. None of the plants we grow is rated past zone 10. Most of the coast trees above reach zone 10, and so do both cypresses. Three more grow wild in Florida’s scrub, the dry sand ridges of the peninsula:

• Scrub hickory, which grows wild only in Florida and stands up to hurricane winds. Zones 8 to 10, 10 to 30 feet.
• Chapman oak, a small scrub oak whose low-tannin acorns Florida scrub-jays favor. Zones 7 to 10, 10 to 25 feet.
• Tough bully, a thorny small tree of dunes and scrub that thrives in drought, salty wind and poor sand. Zones 8 to 10, 12 to 30 feet.

North Florida’s interior also appears in native trees for the Southeast.

Pests, disease and invasive plants

Laurel wilt

Laurel wilt set off the fastest recorded epidemic of tree deaths after its beetle, from Asia, reached a port in Georgia in 2002. Its fungus kills redbay, swamp bay and sassafras, and the disease has reached nearly 300 counties from Texas to North Carolina. The leaves wilt and discolor but stay on, the whole tree follows within weeks, and the sapwood shows dark stains. No cure exists, but a redbay injected with fungicide every two years has outlived every redbay around it. Never move wood out of an infested area.

Emerald ash borer

Emerald ash borer reached Harrison County, Texas, in 2016, and 40 Texas counties by June 2026. Where it is established it can kill an ash within a year, so plant several kinds of tree, not a row of one.

Chinese tallow, Brazilian peppertree and cogongrass

Chinese tallow, the popcorn tree, came to the Texas coast in the 1900s for soap and seed oil. It takes wet or salty ground and has converted large areas of the upper Texas coastal prairie to woodland. Florida prohibits it. Brazilian peppertree shades out the trees beneath it, and Texas bans its sale. Cogongrass, an Asian grass, is a weed in all five states, and mowing or burning only opens the ground to new shoots from its rhizomes.

Deer, hogs and nutria

Deer favor yaupon leaves and eat the twigs and sprouts of water tupelo, though they rarely bother pawpaw. Feral hogs root up longleaf seedlings and can wipe out a planting. Where nutria live, a wire guard is the only known protection for a young pond cypress. Protecting trees from animals has the hardware.

Where to start

• Your state’s natives: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas each have a list.
• Distance from the house: the site check tests a bald cypress 25 feet from a wall.
• A tree for the spot: the tree finder is set here to zone 9, full sun, wet ground and salt.
• The first summer: the watering calculator gives the water for a bare-root sapling in sand.

Common questions

What native trees grow best on the Gulf Coast?

The ones matched to the ground: live oak and yaupon on the salty coast, bald cypress in the river swamps and overcup oak in the Delta. Chinquapin oak suits the Black Belt’s chalk, and longleaf pine the Piney Woods’ sand.

Which trees stand up best to hurricanes?

Live oak, southern magnolia, bald cypress, pond cypress and the native hollies rated highest in a University of Florida study of eight hurricanes. Pecan, water oak, southern red oak and sand pine rated lowest.

Which native trees tolerate salt spray?

Live oak, southern magnolia, yaupon, redbay and sand pine stand salt spray, and myrtle oak takes salt wind on the dunes.

When is the best time to plant trees in Florida and Louisiana?

While they are dormant, from fall through winter, when the roots keep growing before spring. Magnolias and pawpaw go in at the end of winter or in early spring.

What hardiness zone is the Gulf Coast?

The five states run from zone 7b in the hills of north Alabama and north Mississippi to 11b in the Florida Keys. Find yours with the ZIP code lookup.