Live Oak Trees

When we went to Alabama this spring, we stopped at Ingram, Texas at a campgound in a Pecan tree farm, which were tall silver white bark trees with no leaves in March. There were some other deciduous trees with pretty green leaves and I asked the owner if they were oak trees. She said "Yaas, mam, and we have 2 lava oaks trees out back over 100 years old. I said 'lava oak trees? Yaas mam. I asked, how do you spell that? envisioning a volcano. In her extreme southern drawl she said, el -i vee - eh. I said "live oak trees?" Yaas mam. She must have thought I was dim witted at best as I said 'I've never heard of them.' It must be a' Taazas thiiing', she said. I went out to the river and there were 2 massive oak trees. I thought it unusual as we don't go around saying we have live fir trees here. It is very common for the oaks to be draped with Spanish moss by the water area.
The mystery became clear this week. I am reading James Michener's book 'Texas and a family is moving from the south to the north east area of Texas, a very different terrain. As they choose their land they are going to settle, they find 'We have six kinds of oak; live, black, post, water and the tough types, white and red.' Apparently, the live oaks that retain their leaves in winter are called live because the others with barren branches appear dead. Who knew?