Powhatan County Post Oak

We first heard about this former state champion post oak from the incomparable coffee table book, Remarkable Trees of Virginia. It’s also included in the Virginia Big Tree Registry maintain by Virginia Tech.

From Nancy Ross Hugo’s description on page 162 of Remarkable Trees of Virginia:

Growing on farmland that has been in the Christian family since the 1700s, the tree may also be quiet old. According to one relative, when William Christian described the tree in 1992, he said the tree looked the same then as it did over 75 years earlier when he used to rest plow horses under it.

Native to Virginia, post oaks are slow-growing but long-lived. The average post oak lives about 250 years, and some live to be 450. They are usually stout trees, characterized by broad, dense, rounded crowns and spreading branches that are often somewhat gnarled or twisted.