“First stop on any live oak tour: The historic Emancipation Oak on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton was called one of the world’s 10 great trees by the National Geographic Society.”

View Tour de Tree by Tom Horton at Bay Journal:

Such glory beckoned like cool water to a parched throat; but I almost didn’t get there. It was the live oaks’ fault. A friend said we should visit them first, and once you start with Quercus virginiana, you don’t want to leave them. They spread two or three times their height, mighty limbs swooping and gnarling, combining power and grace with a rugged fluidity — sculptures evoking centuries of wind and weather.