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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-571
Live Oak
Quercus virginiana
Live Oak is a nearly evergreen, sprawling oak of the southeastern coastal plain that keeps its leaves through winter and drops them only as new growth pushes in spring. Its acorns are sweet and low in tannin, edible straight off the tree, and the seed can even be pressed for a cooking oil - an unusual yield for an oak. A single tree can spread root suckers into a dense clonal thicket 60-plus feet across, which makes it nearly impossible to kill and a strong choice for binding an eroding bank, but the same underground root connections let oak wilt disease move from tree to tree once it takes hold in a stand. It tolerates salt spray, hurricanes and occasional flooding better than almost any other oak, which is likely what lets it dominate coastal forest.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 8–10
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 4.5–7.3
- Plant type
- Evergreen Tree
- Mature height
- 40–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 60–100 ft
- Plant spacing
- 50–80 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Both
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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