Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various North American evergreen oak trees, especially Quercus virginiana of the southeast United States and Q. agrifolia of California and northern Mexico.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An American oak, Quercus virens.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An evergreen species of oak characteristic of the US South, the southern live oak, Quercus virginiana
- noun Any of several other species of
oak withevergreen , usuallyholly -like leaves
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any of several American evergreen oaks
Etymologies
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Examples
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treeseed commented on the word live oak
Live oak or evergreen oak is a general term for a number of unrelated oaks in several different sections of the genus Quercus that happen to share the character of evergreen foliage.
The name live oak comes from the fact that evergreen oaks are still green and "live" in winter, when other oaks are dormant, leafless and "dead"-looking. The name is used mainly in North America, where evergreen oaks are widespread in warmer areas, along the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to Texas and across the southwest to California and southwest Oregon.
When the term live oak is used in a specific rather than general sense, it most commonly refers to the Southern live oak (the first species so named), but can often refer to other species regionally.
_Wikipedia
February 17, 2008
yarb commented on the word live oak
Citation on arroyo.
August 26, 2008
hernesheir commented on the word live oak
The southern live oak, Quercus virginiana, was also known as the "rocket tree".
April 27, 2010