Under blue skies, the live oaks were just trees — hearty and expansive trees.
But in the feeble light of waning days or the frequent forays of morning fog, the rangy and sinuous moss-draped limbs became a Lovecraftian monster, head stuck into the damp loam in an attempted retreat to the underworld.
And if one stood still enough, those limbs just might start to writhe.
The underside of a Live Oak.
There’s nothing that creepifies a place more than live oaks and Spanish moss. Live oak is a tree species whose limbs stretch out impossibly far, like serpents or gnarled grasping fingers. Spanish moss is the shaggy vegetation that drapes down from the limbs. It isn’t actually a moss. The two grow together throughout much of the coastal Southeast.
