Friendship Oak is a 500-year-old southern live oak ( Quercus virginiana ) located on the Gulf Park campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Long Beach, Mississippi. The campus was formerly Gulf Park College for Women from 1921 until 1971. [1]
Friendship Oak dates from the year 1487, and was a sapling at the time that Christopher Columbus first visited the New World. According to legend, those who enter the shade of its branches will remain friends for all their lives. [2]
In the 1920s, poet Vachel Lindsay taught at Gulf Park College for Women and read poetry to students beneath the branches of Friendship Oak. [3]
Friendship Oak was the 110th tree to be registered with the Live Oak Society. [4] At the time of registration (circa 1940), the tree's trunk circumference was 14 feet (4.3 m).
In 1950, the oak was featured in a Life magazine article about Gulf Park College, where students attended classes under the tree. [5]
On August 22, 2011, staff from the Mississippi Forestry Commission took the following measurements on Friendship Oak: [2]
Numerous weddings have taken place beneath the branches of the Friendship Oak. [6] [7] Most of the wedding ceremonies have been celebrated by former students of Gulf Park College or the University of Southern Mississippi.
Through the centuries, hurricane winds have defoliated the Friendship Oak and subjected its roots to seawater pushed inland from the Gulf of Mexico as storm surges. At least twice since the mid-1950s, acorns from Friendship Oak have been gathered to produce seedlings for replanting along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to replace live oaks that were destroyed by Hurricanes Camille (1969) and Katrina (2005). [8]
Quercus rubra, commonly called northern red oak or champion oak, is an oak in the red oak group. It is a native of North America, in the eastern and central United States and southeast and south-central Canada. It grows from the north end of the Great Lakes, east to Nova Scotia, south as far as Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and west to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota. It has been introduced to small areas in Western Europe, where it can frequently be seen cultivated in gardens and parks. It prefers good soil that is slightly acidic. Often simply called red oak, northern red oak is so named to distinguish it from southern red oak, also known as the Spanish oak. It is also the state tree of New Jersey and the provincial tree of Prince Edward Island.
Quercus virginiana, also known as the Southern live oak, is an evergreen oak tree endemic to the Southeastern United States. Though many other species are loosely called live oak, the Southern live oak is particularly iconic of the Old South. Many very large and old specimens of live oak can be found today in the Deep South region of the United States.
The Wye Oak was the largest white oak tree in the United States and the State Tree of Maryland from 1941 until its demise in 2002. Wye Oak State Park preserves the site where the revered tree stood for more than 400 years in the town of Wye Mills, Talbot County, Maryland.
The Treaty Oak is an octopus-like Southern live oak in Jacksonville, Florida. The tree is estimated to be 250 years old and may be the single oldest living thing in Jacksonville, predating the founding of the city by Isaiah Hart during the 1820s. It is located in Treaty Oak Park in the Southbank area of Downtown Jacksonville.
The Mingo Oak was a white oak in the U.S. state of West Virginia. First recognized for its age and size in 1931, the Mingo Oak was the oldest and largest living white oak tree in the world until its death in 1938.
Angel Oak is a Southern live oak located in Angel Oak Park on Johns Island near Charleston, South Carolina. The tree is estimated to be 400-500 years old. It stands 66.5 ft tall, measures 28 ft in circumference, and produces shade that covers 17,200 square feet. Its longest branch distance is 187 ft in length. Angel Oak was the 210th tree to be registered with the Live Oak Society.
The Old Avery Oak Tree was a white oak tree that stood in Dedham, Massachusetts until it was knocked down in 1972. It had a circumference of over 20 ft (6 m) and stood on East Street near the Fairbanks House. It was named for Jonathan Avery, the owner of the tree, who had an estate that was bounded roughly by East Street, Mt. Vernon Street, Barrows Street, and Brookdale Avenue. The Avery family was one of the early settlers of Dedham, arriving in 1650.
Hooker Oak was an extremely large valley oak tree in Chico, California. Amateur botanist and local socialite Annie Bidwell, whose husband had founded Chico, named the tree in 1887 after English botanist and Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. It was featured in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. The tree fell in 1977 and portions of the wood was later milled for use by local artisans.
The University of Southern Mississippi is a public research university with its main campus in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award bachelor's, master's, specialist, and doctoral degrees. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity."
Tullis-Toledano Manor, also known as, the Toledano-Philbrick-Tullis House, was a red-clay brick mansion on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Biloxi. It was considered an example of Greek Revival architecture. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Cowthorpe is a village in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Wetherby, 10 miles (16 km) east of Harrogate, 7 miles (11 km) from Knaresborough and 13.5 miles (21.7 km) from York.
Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1,200–1,800 years or more. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 379 feet (115.5 m) in height and up to 29.2 feet (8.9 m) in diameter at breast height (dbh). These trees are also among the oldest living things on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began by the 1850s, this massive tree occurred naturally in an estimated 2,100,000 acres (850,000 ha) along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon within the United States.
Presbyterian Church in Basking Ridge is a historic church at 1 E. Oak Street in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. Its churchyard held the Old Oak Tree of Basking Ridge, estimated to be 600 years old, until 2017.
The Big Oak is a large live oak located in Thomasville, Georgia, in the United States at the corner of Crawford Street and Monroe Street. The Big Oak is one of many historic landmarks located in Thomasville. The Big Oak was one of the earliest trees registered with the Live Oak Society. Registered by P.C. Andrews in 1936, the Big Oak was the forty-ninth live oak registered. At the time of registration, the Big Oak's girth was 21 feet 6 inches.
The Duffie Oak is a historic Southern live oak in Mobile, Alabama. Being approximately 300 years old, it is considered by scholars to be the oldest living landmark in the city. It was originally known as the Seven Sisters Oak for its number of large limbs. It was later renamed for former mayor of Mobile George A. Duffie, who lived nearby.
The Live Oak Society is a membership organization for mature Live Oak trees. It was founded in 1934 to advance the culture, distribution, preservation, and appreciation of the southern live oak and functions under the auspices of the Louisiana Garden Club Federation, Inc. By 2013, more than 7,000 live oaks were registered with the Society.
A part of tree measurement is measurement of the crown of a tree, which consists of the mass of foliage and branches growing outward from the trunk of the tree. The average crown spread is the average horizontal width of the crown, taken from dripline to dripline as one moves around the crown. The dripline being the outer boundary to the area located directly under the outer circumference of the tree branches. When the tree canopy gets wet, any excess water is shed to the ground along this dripline. Some listings will also list the maximum crown spread which represents the greatest width from dripline to dripline across the crown. Other crown measurements that are commonly taken include limb length, crown volume, and foliage density. Canopy mapping surveys the position and size of all of the limbs down to a certain size in the crown of the tree and is commonly used when measuring the overall wood volume of a tree.
Tree volume is one of many parameters that are measured to document the size of individual trees. Tree volume measurements serve a variety of purposes, some economic, some scientific, and some for sporting competitions. Measurements may include just the volume of the trunk, or the volume of the trunk and the branches depending on the detail needed and the sophistication of the measurement methodology.
The Wallace Oak was an oak tree that stood in Elderslie, Renfrewshire. It is reputed to have seeded around 1100 and by the late 13th-century grew on the estate of Scottish independence leader William Wallace's father. Wallace is reputed to have hidden himself within the tree to escape from English soldiers. The tree was damaged by the removal of wood to make souvenirs in the 19th-century and it fell during a storm in 1856.
Coordinates: 30°21′06.37″N89°08′09.94″W / 30.3517694°N 89.1360944°W