Live Oak Pruning in Mobile, AL

Live oak pruning is its own craft in Mobile. These are the trees of Bienville Square, Government Street and the Avenue of the Oaks at Spring Hill College, and a single one can shade a whole lot. The Duffie Oak on Caroline Avenue, thought to be about 300 years old, has a limb spread of 126 feet. Live oaks are among the most wind-resistant trees on the Gulf Coast, which is why so many survived Frederic, Katrina and Sally. What brings homeowners to us is less often failure than reach: limbs over the roof, resting on the ground, scraping trucks in the driveway or crowding the street.

How live oaks grow

Live oaks spread wide and low, and young ones often develop two or more competing trunks. Over decades, the limbs get long and heavy at the tips, and some bend down until they touch the ground. Research by Edward Gilman at the University of Florida on young live oaks showed that shortening one of two competing stems slows its growth and shifts growth to the leader, which is the idea behind structural pruning on younger trees. On mature trees, the work is mostly about the ends of limbs.

What we do on a mature oak

• Remove dead and broken branches, which are common after storms
• Reduce long, heavy limbs back to healthy side branches to lighten them
• Raise clearance over roofs, driveways and sidewalks with small cuts toward the tips where possible, rather than removing whole large limbs at the trunk
• Keep the interior branches; stripping them out, called lion-tailing, pushes weight to the tips and invites breakage
• Leave Spanish moss and resurrection fern alone unless they hide something; neither one is a parasite

Permits and Heritage Trees

Oaks other than water oak are on the City of Mobile's Heritage Tree list. Inside a historic district, a permit is required for Heritage Trees 8 inches and larger on residential lots, and in the right-of-way any tree work needs a Mobile Tree Commission permit. On a developed home lot outside a historic district and out of the right-of-way, pruning your own live oak needs no permit. Many of Mobile's grandest oaks line streets, so we always check where the trunk stands.

Roots matter as much as limbs

University of Florida guidance advises never cutting roots closer to the trunk than about five times its diameter. Driveway widening, new patios and trenching for utilities do more long-term damage to old live oaks than most pruning. If you are planning construction near a big oak, talk to us before the excavator arrives.