Live Oak

Size, growth and what to expect

Young trees grow fast where they are well watered, and our growth estimator gives it the medium rate, about a foot and a half a year. Expect 40 to 80 feet, with a crown spreading 60 to 100 feet. Old crowns can span 150 feet, and some trees live 500 years or more. It is nearly evergreen, dropping its old leaves in spring as the new ones open.

It flowers from March to May as the new leaves come out, and the acorns ripen the same year, maturing in September and falling before December. It bears almost every year, often heavily, and even root sprouts a foot tall can carry acorns. The acorns are about three quarters of an inch long and dark brown to black. They are sweet, and turkeys, bobwhites, mallards, Florida scrub-jays, squirrels, deer and black bears eat them.

It grows wild on the lower Coastal Plain from southeastern Virginia to the Florida Keys and west along the Gulf to southeastern Texas. In Florida it grows almost everywhere from sandhills to hammocks, and farther north it keeps to the coast.

How to grow Live Oak

Live oak wants full sun or light shade and grows in sand, loam or clay, best on the acid side. Once rooted it takes drought, salt spray, wind and an occasional flood, but not ground that stays saturated. Long hard freezes damage it. Its roots spread near the surface and in time lift sidewalks and drives, so give it open ground. Set trees 60 feet apart, and keep each one 50 feet from a wall and more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Young live oaks move easily. Plant them from late fall to early spring, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Live oak acorns sprout soon after they fall and need no winter chill. Sow them on arrival, an inch deep, under hardware cloth.

Water every week or two through the first summer, then only in a long drought. Deer browse young oaks, so guard each sapling with a tube or cage for its first three years. Prune every year for the first three years and every five years after to age 30, taking out rival trunks and narrow forks before they split. Prune only in the dormant season, and paint each cut at once where oak wilt is present.

The flowers are wind pollinated, and an acorn crop wants another oak nearby. Live oak belongs to the white oak group, so its acorns ripen in one season and sprout as soon as they fall. Oak wilt has killed live oaks by the thousands in Texas and may be a threat elsewhere in the South. Leaf blister can strip much of the foliage in some years, and a borer attacks the roots of young trees on the Atlantic coast. Spanish moss and mistletoe often hang in the crown, and heavy moss can shade out the lower limbs.