Live Oak Trees of Avery Island, La

Today's post is dedicated to the beautiful Live Oak Trees on Avery Island. These trees are absolutely breath taking and hard to describe in words or capture in pictures. They are huge and strong. The Spanish Moss that hangs from their branches give them an elegant appearance.

Each tree has a different appearance because of the way the branches expand, twist, and reach outward toward the ground in a horizontal manner and then turn back up to the sky. These trees are everywhere in the south but you never get tired of the awe inspiring feelings each one of them produce when you view them.

Their branches twist and turn every which way and it feels like they are going to reach out and scoop you up...just like in the Wizard of Oz movie. It is hard to determine if they are gorgeous or scary.

The Spanish Moss that hangs from the branches.

Spanish moss has been used for various purposes, including building insulation, mulch, packing material, mattress stuffing, and fiber. In the early 1900s it was used commercially in the padding of car seats.

The legend of how Spanish Moss came to be:

As the story goes; there was once a traveler who came with his Spanish fiancée in the 1700s to start a plantation near the city of Charleston, SC. She was a beautiful bride-to-be with long flowing raven hair. As the couple was walking over the plantation sight[sic] near the forest, and making plans for their future, they were suddenly attacked by a band of  Cherokee who were not happy to share the land of their forefathers with strangers. As a final warning to stay away from the Cherokee nation, they cut off the long dark hair of the bride-to-be and threw it up in an old Live Oak Tree. As the people came back day after day and week after week, they began to notice the hair had shriveled and turned grey and had begun spreading from tree to tree. Over the years the moss spread from South Carolina to Georgia and Florida. To this day, if one stands under a live oak tree, one will see the moss jump from tree to tree and defend itself with a large army of insects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_moss