Quite a while ago I ran across this note from J.T. McCants, the long time bursar, to Tony Martino, Rice’s gardener. I got a pretty big kick out of it so I saved it for no particular reason:
It made me laugh because it perfectly captures a feeling I’ve had more than once since I moved to Houston: I’ve gotten so used to most of trees keeping their leaves all year that it’s possible to panic a little when the one in our front yard starts to shed them.
But I somehow got to thinking about this today while I was walking around campus. What specific trees was he talking about? I started looking and it didn’t make sense. Here’s what I saw last winter in between the old and the new dormitories:
Those look like live oaks to me and they most certainly don’t lose their leaves in the fall. Hmmmm. So I went to the pictures and by pure chance I found an early 1930s aerial shot that was taken during the winter. 
When? I don’t know. But it had to have been well before the late 1950s when Joseph Davies took this picture:
This was a most unexpected development. There is much to ponder.
Bonus: There has been quite a bit of new tree planting going on recently and it’s been a pleasure to see them go in. I’ve made it my mission to ensure that any future historian who wonders about the trees will have a way to figure it all out.
