This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V22", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
Neither of the five live oaks, Q. virens, of which I write, are as large as the Cawthorpe Yorkshire oak, mentioned in your January number, but they are very respectable sticks of timber nevertheless. At Old Town plantation, on the west bank of the Ashley river, the site of Charleston, which was abandoned about 1680 for Oyster Point, there stands a live oak that measures thirty-two feet in circumference. One side of this tree was injured many years ago by fire. It must have been a big tree when the Indians burnt the town.
At Peach-tree plantation, on the west bank of the South San tee, there is a live oak that measures twenty-nine feet around, the first limb measuring sixteen feet around, and extending seventy-five feet. At midday it shades half an acre of ground. Prof. M. Nurney said it was probably the finest tree this side of the Mississippi river, and that it was worth a man's time and money to come from Canada to see it, - rather an expensive trip in 1846 when he saw this tree.
At Weehonoka plantation, on the east bank of the Waccamaw river, three live oaks grow near each other. The first one measures twenty feet, the second seventeen feet nine inches, and the third fifteen feet around. These trees were all measured in the smallest part; all of them have the hour-glass shape to a greater or lesser degree. Not far from these last trees there is a common fox grape-vine, that measures four feet and two inches round.
 
Continue to: