Charleston, South Carolina.

Last week, on Cellpic Sunday’s post here, I featured The Old Senator tree in Saint Augustine, Florida. Tour guides and other information sources indicate that Southern Live Oak is over 600 years old. As I noted in that article, there is some controversy over the age of that tree, as spectacular as it is.

On our way to visit friends in South Carolina only a couple of weeks later, my son commented that as long as we were near Charleston, we should visit the Angel Oak Tree. One of the oldest trees in the country, this Southern Live Oak variety is advertised to be 300 to 400 years old. If you look at the photo above and compare it to the image on my Old Senator post, you’ll note that the Angel Oak is much larger. At 65 feet (19 m) tall, and a circumference of 25 feet (7.6 m), it is the largest live oak tree east of the Mississippi River. Given what I’ve read, I now also doubt the claim that the Old Senator is over 600 years old.

About the photo: The Angel Oak is so large that in order to include the top of the tree, I captured two images with my Samsung S20U and used Lightroom’s Panorama mode to stack them into a large panoramic image that doesn’t capture the entire circumference of the tree. I then shipped it off to Luminar Neo for final processing. On this week’s upcoming Travel Tuesday, I will feature more of the tree’s history and information about how to get to the park.

Update 19 March, 2023.

Lynn and I are boarding the Norwegian Star this morning for a 15-day cruise. We have limited Internet access, so though I will be reading comments and links, my responses will likely be delayed.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner