Spanish Moss hanging on a tree - doesn't look like out of a fairytale book?
This is just one of many pretty houses there in McClellanville with the charming architecture of the South
and with those inviting big and cozy looking porches
This is just one of those many churches also in McClallenville, but I liked this one the best: the Episcopal Church that is built under a majestic shady big and old oak tree
"Is this nothing to ye who pass by?"
And a river runs trough...
The place to be on a lazy, sunny afternoon - but please without all the mosquitoes! 
A "female" tree...... right??.... :-))
A dream of every kid is to have a REAL tree house
There is no better place to watch the boats going in and out to the harbor
Francis Marion Gate on Goatfield Plantation
Where are all the horses here?
Let's take a walk!
Light is everything
New spring green leaves, the clear blue sky and the Angel Oak
Spanish Moss
Spanish moss is an epiphyte (a plant that lives upon other plants; from Greek "epi"=upon "phyte"=plant), which absorbs nutrients (especially calcium) and water from the air and rainfall. Spanish moss is colloquially known as "air plant". It is not a biological parasite in the same sense as another epiphyte, mistletoe (it does not burrow into the tree and suck out nutrients)- however this is using a technical meaning of "parasite" of the biological community. By using a tree's structure it blocks out sunlight that would otherwise fall on the host tree's own leaves. The amount of sunlight it blocks is proportional to the amount it reduces tree growth depending on the tree type. On some trees only smaller or lower branches will die but the tree will grow at a slower rate.
It can grow so thickly on tree limbs that it gives a somewhat "gothic" appearance to the landscape, and while it rarely kills the trees it lowers their growth rate by reducing the amount of light to a tree's own leaves. It also increases wind resistance, which can prove fatal to a tree in hurricanes.
In the southern
Spanish Moss shelters a number of creatures, including chiggers, rat snakes and three species of bats.
Due to its propensity for growing in humid southern locales like Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama, the plant is often associated with Southern Gothic imagery.
In
A Cuban came to the area with his Spanish fiancée in the 1700s to start a plantation near the city. The most striking feature of the bride-to-be was her beautiful, flowing raven hair. As the couple was walking through the forest to reach the location of their future plantation, they were attacked and killed by an army of the Cherokee tribe, who were not happy to have these strangers on their land. As a final warning to stay away from the Cherokee nation, they cut off the long, dark hair of the bride-to-be and threw it up into an oak tree. As they came back day after day, week after week, they noticed that the hair had shriveled and turned grey and had also spread throughout the tree. Wherever the Cherokees went, the moss followed them and would eventually chase them out of their homeland of
The Angel Oak is thought to be one of the oldest living things east of the
Towering over 65 feet high, the Angel Oak has shaded John's
Acorns from the Angel Oak have grown to produce authentic direct-offspring trees. Live oaks generally grow out and not up, but the Angel Oak has had plenty of time to do both. Its limbs, the size of tree trunks themselves, are so large and heavy that some of them rest on the ground (some even drop underground for a few feet and then come back up), a feature common to only the very oldest live oaks.
YES, we have still some palm trees left on the island! Somebody asked me in a comment to one of my last posts about palm trees, if there are still some palm trees left to photograph in Key West, because I captured so many of them already on my blog. I have to say it again: I just LOVE palm trees and no one of them look the same!
