Transplanting A Live Oak Tree

[Sonny]

Many citizens wanted to keep the tree. This is not the first case in this area. There were a few fund raisers to collect funds to support the move.

In Youngsville, last year, a similar situation presented itself. The community raised funds to buy adjacent property and that road was rerouted onto the new property.

Several years ago, there was debate about removing a large live oak in town, to make room for a filling station. The filling station won out and the tree was cut down. Less than a year later, the filling station closed its doors. The city sued the company on behalf of the citizens and won.

Folks here have become keen (militant) to the idea of preserving the remaining old live oak trees. In some cases, folks have even protested against others picking the Spanish moss from them.

As of this writing (11:50 am), I haven't heard how the move is going/ went. It was supposed to take 3 hours to move it, 1 1/2 miles. KLFY TV has a noontime local broadcast, "Meet Your Neighbor", so maybe they'll have an update, then.

Sonny

[RicodJour]

Has any of the talking heads bandied about the cost of moving the tree? Largish thousands, but how large?

R

[Sonny]

I haven't heard anything negative regarding moving the tree. I have no idea what the cost may have been.

The tree got moved with apparently no glitches. I would have liked to have witnessed the event. The video, within the article, isn't too impressive, as is the idea of moving something that big.

[willshak]

Sonny wrote the following:

Good luck with the move. I would suspect that it would take 2 cranes working in tandem to lift and put it on a heavy duty flatbed, like the kind used to transport large electrical power converters. I doubt whether it would topple if secured adequately.

[Jack Stein]

Live Oaks live an average of 200 years, This one is already 150 years old...

They could have planted a new one, and in 25 years had a nice tree, with an average of 175 years of life left. Meanwhile, they could have built some nice pallets to move giant wood working tools to market:-)

But if public money is

Trees ain't that easy to kill, particularly if you are trying to kill them, or really don't care. I've transplanted a ton of trees, ripping them out of the ground with a tractor, chain, and half ass digging around the root ball, and out of around 25, all but one lived. I would have been happy if half of them made it.

My brothers neighbor had a Xmas tree he planted. It got to be about 25' and he cut the sucker down to the ground... The damn thing grew back and is now about 25' tall again. This was/is a Blue Spruce evergreen.

Recently, I found a Norway maple growing at the foundation of my house. It was about 3-4 foot little thing, but too big to yank out by hand, so I cut it down the the ground. That fall, cut it again. Next spring, it was back, cut it down to the ground again. Now I'm curious as to how the little sucker could keep on living, so decided to see how long it would take. That fall, cut it too the ground again, this time, I butchered the 1" trunk. Next spring, sure enough, it was back, this time with multiple trunks, and the leaves were like 2x's as large as normal. I cut that sucker to the ground twice a summer. This year, about the 5 or 6th year, it gave up the ghost. I almost felt sorry for it.

I know if I really wanted the thing to live, it would have croaked with just a light pruning. My guess is after spending tons of cash to move a half dead tree, the crazed citizenry will drown the sucker, trying to keep it alive.

Oak is my favorite wood for tool bench legs...