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Lewisburg's Seven Sisters Oak
Lewisburg's Seven Sisters Oak
One of the simple pleasures of living in Lewisburg is strolling under its many old, moss, and fern-laden live oak trees. Many of Lewisburg's narrow streets-- including Copal and Elm-- have to curve around these trees to avoid them.
Lewisburg's most famous, oldest, and most majestic oak is the Seven Sisters Oak, within sight of and just north of Lake Pontchartrain on Fountain Street. The Seven Sisters resides in the front yard of a private residence but still draws many visitors. It is often used as a backdrop for philanthropic events and concerts. Because of its size, it is said to be not well represented in photographs, as its entirety is hard to represent from one single angle.
Although it is certainly the largest of the live oak trees in Lewisburg, dozens of other live oaks can be found along the surrounding streets and yards. These shady oaks add to Lewisburg's ambiance. Their long green limbs not only enhance the neighborhood for humans, but are also habitat to owls, ospreys, eagles, hawks, songbirds, and woodpeckers. Often foxes, possums, squirrels, raccoons and armadillos live in and around their gnarled trunks. In 2018, a family of foxes took up residence in the Seven Sisters' base and raised six pups before moving on.
In 2019, the Seven Sisters Oak measured a girth of 41 feet 3 inches (at 1 meter height) and a height of 59 feet. Its limb spread exceeded 153 feet, more than twice its height. The age of Seven Sisters Oak has been estimated at between 600 and 1,500 years, with many experts favoring 1500. The Seven Sisters Oak is both a Louisiana as well as a national champion live oak. Although there was some controversy as to whether the oak was one tree or several trees grown together, an inspection by professional foresters in 1976 determined that the tree had developed from a single root system.
The Seven Sisters Oak has held the title of National Live Oak Champion for over 30 years. It was originally registered at the Live Oak Society as "Doby’s Seven Sisters" (No. 200) because the Doby family owned the property where the tree was located and Mrs. Doby was one of seven sisters. The tree was renamed "Seven Sisters Oak" and reregistered at the Live Oak Society as member number 697. The Seven Sisters Oak is the current president of the Live Oak Society, its status awarded to it by virtue of its being the largest live oak registered by the society in North America.
The story of the Live Oak society itself is an interesting one, and since Lewisburg has so many registered oaks, it's worth learning a bit about. Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens, the first president of the University of Southwestern Louisiana Institute, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, started possibly this first organization for live oak trees. After reading Walt Whitman’s poem “I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing,” Stephens began the Live Oak Society in 1934. Since humans come and go (in comparison to oak trees), only trees are allowed to be members, and the largest and oldest trees comprise the society's “officers." To be a member of the society, an oak must be more than 100 years old. The older the tree, the more opportunity for leadership in the organization. For example, the Live Oak Society president is our own Seven Sisters Oak. There are humans involved, naturally, but only to determine a tree's eligibility and complete registration paperwork.
Although live oaks have been described as among the most resilient to storms, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed hundreds of trees in the Lewisburg area, including some oaks, transforming some streets from, what had been described as a "green tunnel," to a comparatively barren landscape. Today, thankfully, many of Lewisburg's trees have grown back, and residents have planted others to replace those lost.
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