Walking the marsh-front grounds of Hofwyl, Quinn and I passed under a canopy of oaks so heavily draped with Spanish moss that they seemed laden with the burden of history.

But pastel-colored row houses, horse-drawn carriages, wind-blown forts and live oaks draped with Spanish moss have an appeal to all ages.

The panhandle is, in look and sentiment, antebellum South, with enormous estates shaded by oaks draped in Spanish moss, and horse farms spread along rolling bluegrass hills.

The city is well known for its streets lined with grand live oaks draped with Spanish moss, and the ubiquity of the Cabbage Palmetto, which is the state tree of South Carolina.

Huge, musty oaks, draped with thick vines and feathery moss, and even an occasional looming vallenwood trunk that rose to disap- pear among the foliage, prevented a single sunbeam from reaching the ground.

We hiked through a forest of oaks draped with Spanish moss where painted buntings, sparrow-sized birds so brilliantly colored they looked as though they had dust-bathed in a water colorist's palette, flitted in front of us.

CHAPTER 4 PEOPLE came TO the fifteen-hundred-acre City Park to feed the ducks or to relax under the spreading live oaks draped with gray-green curtains of Spanish moss.

On her way to the kitchen door, she paused under an oak draped with Spanish moss.

I leaned back in the convertible and looked straight up into the fantastic twists and curves, the magical hardness and softness of a live oak draped in moss.

The Lowcountry has always been a shady place full of graceful, dense pines and huge, live oaks draped with moss, but now trees were snapped off or overturned everywhere, and those left standing were nearly denuded of leaves.