Live Oak Alley

This live oak has a dozen or more syblings along the "alley" at Brookgreen Gardens. The daffodils had gone by at the time of this visit, and that looks like an azalea in the crook of the live oak's arm. These trees are at least 200 years old and date from the era of rice plantations, farmed by slaves imported from west Africa because they knew how to back up rivers to flood the rice fields and feed and harvest the crop.
After the Civil War the slaves either left or no longer could be driven to do the dangerously hard work. Rice farming here stopped and the plantations folded. In the early 1900's several of the old properties were consolidated and the old riceland turned into hunting camps for the wealthy. The buildings are gone, except for an old kitchen at Brookgreen, but many of the walks, walls and springs survive. Note "Spanish moss" hanging from the limbs of the live oak. Guides will tell you the plant that drapes from the trees is neither Spanish nor moss, but the name sticks.