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bored... so... Spring Break Pictures!

Me being a nerd and all, it wasn't nearly as... um...... interesting as I'm sure some spring breaks in my age group were ;) But we went to Charleston, South Carolina for a week and had a blast!!! Besides the amazing food (baaaaaaarbecue) it was LOVELY to escape cold, dark, snowy western NY for a little while... things are GREEN down that way!!! Just thought I'd share some pictures that plant folks might appreciate, since they have such beautiful photo ops down there!

Tupelo Swamp at Audubon Swamp Garden, Magnolia Plantation. No CPs. le sad.
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Ok, he's fauna, not flora.... still very cool :) Although I did think the alligators, however small, were a bit too close for comfort at Magnolia...
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Camellia at Magnolia Plantation... they have TONS of them at the gardens and many were in bloom
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Angel Oak, hands down the most awesome tree I have ever met. It's supposed to be 1400 years old, "the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi". See the speck? The speck is me. And yes, all of those branches (ALL of them) are the same tree.
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Wow, that tree is amazing. I want one in my yard someday! Do you know what kind it is?
And in the first picture, the surface of the water looks like hard ground because of the stuff growing on it. Really nice photos, thanks for sharing
 
DaveyJones- Yup, it's a live oak, Quercus virginiana. I fell in LOVE with these trees while I was there.. they're all so beautiful!!! They grow in coastal areas from Virginia down to Florida. better get one planted now if you want one that big ;)

Here are a few more pics....

Charleston Tea Plantation, the only place where tea is commercially grown in the US (with a live oak branch at the top; like most places around Charleston, they had quite a few of them!). As a tea fanatic, I was quite happy to stumble across this place... they make some lovely Earl Grey (or "Governor Gray" as they call it)
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Azaleas at the tea plantation... they were blooming everywhere!
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An anhinga at Magnolia Plantation... I thought it was a cormorant by the way it was drying its wings, but a guide later corrected me... relatives of cormorants? Neat birds either way!
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Thanks guys! :)

A couple more cause everybody likes the trees ;) These live oaks are at Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant, SC... they were planted in 1744! The picture doesn't begin to do it justice, it was incredible!
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And another angle of Angel Oak, from the base of the main trunk... I could have stayed and photographed it all day. VERY cool stop if you're ever in the Charleston area.
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And those fern-looking things all over it? The people there called them "resurrection plants" though I don't know their Latin name... they shrivel up and turn brown when dry and poof back out again overnight when it rains! They have a thing for live oaks but they don't hurt the trees, thank goodness!
 
WOW that tree has some girth to it.
 
amazing pics! wow, that tree is really awesome looking, I love how the branches dip down to the ground because they're so heavy.
 
my god.... :censor:

down in florida at the Thomas Edison Museum thing...they have a huge Banyan tree in the front yard. that thing was HUGE!!!

great pics! looked like a lot of fun!

Alex
 
Yeah, live oaks are really great. South Georgia and Savannah have them too. One of those idyllic southern heritage sort of things. A lot of them get cut down or severely pruned because of age, and because they start dropping branches and harming cars and tourists. Sometimes you can even see ones with wooden beams propping the branches up.

Sadly, though, the south (and the rest of the US for that matter) has lost most of its old growth because of cotton and development and a host of other things.

Oh, and don't touch the Spanish Moss because you'll get chiggers.
 
  • #10
agentrdy- But it's so fluffy and neat looking.... ;) Heheh probably should have found that out before we went down there... my boyfriend was obsessed with the stuff... but neither of us is itchy so I guess we were lucky, or the frozen north that we've returned to has killed them :p Good to know for next time!

This oak tree actually had an impressive number of wires and wooden supports holding it up... some of those branches are as big as regular trees, they needed it! It sounded like the tree had suffered some hurricane damage in the last few years as well.

What I want to know is, if that was the biggest/oldest tree EAST of the mississippi... what do the west coast trees look like?! :0o:
 
  • #11
Hmmm.. that tree reminds me alot of Blarny Castle (Ireland) from when i visited there... there is a couple trees just like that but that is really cool!

-Flash
 
  • #12
Wow great Pics!!
 
  • #13
Nice shots! That Oak is impressive. :)
 
  • #14
Awesome tree, it's branches touch the ground! Perhaps cooler than a Baobab tree.
 
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  • #15
I love Charleston. Especially the outdoor market with the ladies making baskets out of grass. That's cool.

That's Polypodium polypodioides.
 
  • #16
We have a lot of Live oaks in my area. I have always loved them. There is even a descendant of that tree not far from me.
 
  • #17
What I want to know is, if that was the biggest/oldest tree EAST of the mississippi... what do the west coast trees look like?! :0o:
Oldest would be the Bristle Cone Pine and the tallest is thought to be a Redwood.

Loved climbing the oak trees around where I live in Ft. Leonardwood, MO., when I was a kid. Unfortunately I was really allergic to their pollen and had some pretty severe reactions to it every spring. Seeing those in your pics brings back some fun memories. Thanks for sharing them.
 
  • #19
Nice photos. The town where I was a kid in Mississippi had live oaks growing over the streets in the old section of town. It was like going through a tunnel, especially on rainy days. It would have been a disaster waiting to happen up here in the land of ice and snow, but it was beautiful down there.
 
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