The Empire Live Oak from Tree Town USA is a beautifully shaped, fast growing, and pest resistant tree that is perfect for the landscape.

Necessity is frequently the mother of invention.  When Tree Town USA, the country’s largest tree farm based in Texas, couldn’t get a sufficient yield of high quality Live Oak seedlings from the acorns they were receiving from their seed sources they needed to make changes.  They would regularly end up with many genetically inferior trees that did not meet the quality standards of their most discriminating landscape contractors and landscape architects.  Changes needed to be made to keep their customers happy with a consistent supply of high quality trees.  They developed an area where they could harvest their own acorns from parent trees that exhibited the genetic traits they were looking for to produce high quality trees consistently.  Their experienced team of growers selected parent trees with good branching angles, faster rates of growth, good foliage, and overall appeal from their large inventory of Live Oaks.  They planted them near one another in an isolated area of their 1,200 acre tree farm near Glen Flora, Texas segregated from other Live Oaks on the farm.  They began harvesting acorns produced by the selected trees to produce a large portion of their crop of seedlings.  After watching the seedlings for several years, the growers determined they were getting a much higher percentage of high quality trees than any other seed source they were using.  They noticed consistency between the trees, faster growth and overall higher quality resulting in many more trees meeting the quality requirements of their most discriminating customers. 

Tree Town has thousands of these remarkable trees available to the trade

The good genetics, seedling quality, combined with their growing and pruning practices have produced the first crop of these high quality trees for sale in 2012 in sizes from 10 gal to 45 gal.  Tree Town USA trademarked the name Empire Live Oak to identify the trees produced from these superior genetics and growing practices. 

Compared to other live oaks, these trees grow quickly and have been breed to produce a lovely, upright canopy

The seedlings are produced in special seedling pots to prevent circling roots and each subsequent step up to a larger size occurs when the trees are at a young age to ensure proper root structure.  Trees with root issues or other quality issues are removed at each stage of the shift up process.  The trees are staked for straight trunks, good leaders and good branching.  Any tree that does not meet the genetic or quality requirements along the way to a finished tree is segregated and dealt with.  The end result is a crop of high quality Live Oaks that will have a similar appearance, good branching, faster growth rate, good foliage, and overall appeal when planted in the landscape. 

Tree Land USA offers this tree to professionals in all sizes from 10 to 45 gallons. A 670 gallon version will be available soon.

The great lengths that Tree Town USA has gone through will insure that landscape contractors, landscape architects, business owners and home owners will have a source of consistently high quality trees for their landscapes.  The trees will be offered in sizes up to 670 gal over the next few years.  The company is accepting contract grows for special large landscape construction projects in the future as well as future orders for companies wanting to offer the finest Live Oaks to their customers.  They have more than 70,000 trees in inventory to support the anticipated demand for this popular tree.  The Empire Live Oaks will be offered through retail garden centers, wholesale landscape suppliers, landscape contractors and other retail garden outlets in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.