Etienne de Boré Oak (Tree of Life)

Audubon Park – New Orleans, Louisiana

Etienne de Boré oak - Audubon Park, New Orleans

In New Orleans, and especially the neighborhoods surrounding Audubon Park, this oak has been dubbed “The Tree of Life.” Its registered name with the Live Oak Society is the Etienne de Boré oak. The land on which Audubon Park is located was at one time part of de Boré’s extensive sugarcane plantation.

Registration & Measurements

At just under 35 feet in circumference today, this oak was number 13 on Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens’list of 43 original inductee trees into the Live Oak Societyand is also in the top 100 oldest surviving oaks on the Society’s member list.  Its girth when it was registered (as #21) was 23 feet, 1 inch. The oak is located in Audubon Park on the down-river side of the Audubon Zoo, right over the fence from the giraffe habitat. It’s an enormous tree with a broad gnarly base of roots and a crown of limbs more than 160 feet wide.

The Live Oak Society estimates that any oak with a girth of 17 feet in circumference (measured at 4 feet off the ground) is probably 100 years of age or older. This is a rough system of estimation developed by the Society’s founder, Dr. Stephens, which is fairly accurate, though soil, rain and other habitat conditions can affect a tree’s long-term growth.  A live oak with a girth of more than 30 feet could possibly be 500 years of age or more.  The age of many of the Society’s oldest and largest trees are only rough guesses, and there’s been much heated discussion among amateur arborists and other tree-folk over this issue.

Etienne de Boré oak and friends - Audubon Park - photo by William Guion

History

Jean Etienne de Boréis significant in history as the first French planter in Louisiana to successfully granulate sugarcane into sugar, making sugarcane the main crop over indigo and tobacco in antebellum Louisiana. He originally cultivated indigo (a highly valued crop and popular dye); but after several years of drought and insect damage, de Boré decide to gamble the last of his and his wife’s personal funds on growing sugarcane. In 1795, with the help of two Spaniard exiles from bloody rebellions in Santo Domingo, he succeeded in producing the first granulated sugar in the Louisiana colony. De Boré was also the first mayor of New Orleans, appointed to the position by Governor William C.C. Claiborne in 1803, the same year Louisiana was transferred from Spain to France.  He resigned in 1804, after New Orleans became an American colony through the Louisiana Purchase.

Etienne de Boré bears witnesses to one of many weddings performed below.

Audubon Park is home to several other member trees of the Live Oak Society. The George and Martha Washington oaks were among the original 43 inductee oaks in the Society along with the de Boré oak. George has passed on but Martha is still alive, in the rhino habitat of the Zoo. There are three other unnamed oaks spread across the Park’s grounds that are elder Society members.

Tags: age, Audubon Nature Institute, Audubon Park, Audubon Zoo, Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens, Etienne de Boré, founding member, George and Martha Washington oaks, live oak, Live Oak Society, Louisiana, New Orleans, Tree of Life