Post Oak

June 19, 2014

By: Joel Gillespie

When I was growing up I lived about two miles from Forest Lake Shopping Center, one of the very first shopping centers in Columbia. The Magic Market at FLSC sold ICEE’s, and that was always a draw in the summer. I used to ride my bike there all the time, usually heading down Springlake Circle, hopping the fence to the golf course, crossing it, and then heading down Country Club Road. Back then there was a woods at Country Club Road and Trenholm with a path that led to all the little duplexes, with the field behind. From that field a bridge took us over the creek into the back side of the shopping center.

As I got older and got my green Sekine road bike from Fred out at Cedar Terrace Shopping Center, and even into college, I still took that old path.

The Creek that ran behind the shopping center, Eightmile Branch, is the very same creek that runs across the bottom of Deerfield and Fox Hall, behind the old brick yard near Trenholm Park, under Covenant and Atascadara and eventually under Trenholm Road just next to where my grandmother and dad’s businesses were on Trenholm Road.

Just across the bridge behind the shopping center was a great old tree. It was there my whole life growing up but was gone when I came back to Columbia after being away for 23 years. It was an old oak tree with large low branches, a sign that the tree had first grown up with no competition from other trees, able to spread out and not race for the sky. Perhaps it was in a farmer’s field, maybe a field owned by the mill on Gill’s Creek.

As is typical of oaks of its kind, it was a bit squatty, quite wider in spread than it was tall, with limbs that came straight out from the trunk, the lowest limb maybe six feet up from the ground. If my memory serves me correctly it would have been about three feet in diameter with a limb spread of 70 feet.

A post oak across from my office in Greensboro, much like the one by the creek

I would either sit down against the base of the tree between the large roots (a lifelong habit of mine with big trees) or hoist myself up to the big first limb, where I could sit leaning against the trunk. I did a lot of reading there, or just chilling out drinking an ICEE.

I loved that old tree.

It wasn’t until I was older that I started to learn about trees, and learn that this grand straight-limbed tree was a post oak. Probably because of that tree, the post oak has become my favorite oak tree, and I am happy whenever I come across a big one.

Even if you don’t know much about trees, you’ve walked under post oaks many times, and it’s not hard for me to help you know when you’re looking up at one.

A crazy big post oak tree, Green Hill Cemetery

The post oak is in the white oak family. Among other things this means that the leaves are smooth edged – no pointy bristle tips. Post oak leaves tend to be somewhat dark and glossy-green on top and lighter and somewhat hairy on the undersides. Often the leaf veins are quite prominent. In comparison to other oaks, post oak limbs tend to come straight out from the trunk. They also tend to be crowded (which makes them good climbing trees).

But the single biggest giveaway of the post oak is the shape of the leaf. The post oak leaf is shaped very much like a Maltese cross. It is quite unique and distinctive in this way. It is maybe 4-6 inches long and 3-4 inches wide. Post oak leaves have a habit of not wanting to fall off the tree in the fall; thus post oaks in winter have a fair number of brown hanger-on leaves. As to fall color, well, the post oak isn’t much in that department. Sometimes with the right soil conditions there is a decent show of red. There is often better color in the spring. As the little leaves unfurl in the spring they tend to be reddish in color, and this adds to the diverse color palate of early spring trees.

Leaves of post oak by will cook

Leaves of post oak, by Will Cook

The post oak trunk tends towards a ruddy brownish-gray color, and is somewhat vertically fissured, occasionally also horizontally fissured leaving a blocked appearance, the more so the older the tree gets.

So, why is it called a post oak? Given its craggy and somewhat scraggly appearance, and tendency toward breadth rather than height, it certainly isn’t because of shape. Well, apparently, according to my tree books, the wood is very dense and hard, and decomposes very slowly, and was thus used by our pioneer ancestors for fence posts, and later for railroad ties. It could have been called “railroad tie oak,” but that doesn’t sound very good. I like “cross oak,” named after the shape of the leaf, but then, I would like that.