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Sometimes called Southern live oak, it's a wonderful wildlife habitat, though it takes quite a while to begin producing acorns usually 20 years or more.

Many people complain of live oaks as being very messy trees. They're right, once the tree is mature. It drops leaves that are small and hard to rake. Many oaks are deciduous, meaning that they drop their leaves during the winter. Live oak is evergreen, as it gets its new leaves about the same time that it drops its old leaves.

UF/IFAS Sites. Florida Forest Trees: Bluejack oak (Quercus incana) Florida Forest Trees: Laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia) Florida Forest Trees: Water oak (Quercus nigra). Unlike most oak trees, which are deciduous, southern live oaks are nearly evergreen. They replace their leaves over a short period of several weeks in the spring. Sweet, tapered acorns produced by the trees are eaten by birds and mammals, including sapsuckers, mallards, wild turkeys, squirrels, black bears, and deer.

Sometimes, these leaves may even have veins that turn brown while interveinal areas remain green.

The threatened Florida scrub jay relies on the scrub form of the southern live oak for nesting. Live oak dropping leaves in early spring. Live oaks, also known as evergreen oaks, are beautiful and stately trees in the landscape. However, live oaks are NOT true evergreens. They do drop their old leaves as new leaves emerge in the spring. This is NORMAL and NOT a disease takedownstump.barted Reading Time: 2 mins.