By DEBORAH E. LANS
GHENT–Did you know that Big Tree Hunters roam the forests and fields of Columbia, Greene and neighboring counties in search of great old trees? Moreover, they have “bagged” trees 200-300 years old, trees that require multiple people holding hands to encircle them and trees that are state “champions.”
The state’s DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) maintains a Big Tree Register which lists champions by both scientific and popular names according to standards set by the non-profit American Forests, which runs the National Champion Tree Program. A tree is assessed by a score which is the sum of its height, trunk circumference at chest height and the average spread of its crown.
Since trees grow, fall and sometimes are cut down due to illness, a champion one day may be replaced another.
A chestnut oak at the Greenport Conservation Area was awarded champion status in 2002, standing 75 feet tall and 168 inches around according to the Columbia Land Conservancy’s Heidi Bock. The tree stands in the hedgerow to the north of the access-for-all trail leading to the gazebo, but it has recently lost its champion status to an oak on private land in the south part of the county.
Other mighty oaks are publicly accessible in Kinderhook, in and just beyond the Dutch Reformed Cemetery, in “an impressive old forest” according to Fred Breglia, a certified arborist who is also a big tree hunter and the executive director of the Landis Arboretum in Esperance.
Mr. Breglia knows whereof he speaks. Two years ago he “discovered” the biggest tree in the state, on private land in Rensselaer County – a towering cottonwood estimated to be 108 feet high and with a circumference of more than 33 feet (or, 11 feet in diameter). Cottonwoods grow quickly and are short-lived – that is to say, they live 75-100 years on average. Experts estimate Mr. Breglia’s discovery to be “only” some 150 years old.
Far older is an American sycamore tree on the grounds of the Martin Van Buren house, Lindenwald, also in Kinderhook. Park Ranger Dawn Olson says the tree was probably planted in the late 1700s, before President Van Buren bought the property and at a time when the property was likely entirely agricultural. Mr. Breglia measured the sycamore in 2023 to be 73 feet tall, with a circumference of more than 16 feet and an average crown spread of 94 ’x 93’. Put in simpler terms, the tree is massive and dwarfs the Van Buren home which sits to its side.
Of course, size does not always matter. Dr. Charles Canham, senior scientist emeritus at the Cary Institute, reports that the oldest tree he knows in the Hudson Valley “is a scrawny 6” diameter chestnut oak growing on a steep slope at the Cary Institute.” He believes the diminutive oak is over 300 years old and survived because it was “just never worth anyone’s time to scramble up and cut it down.”
Dr. Canham also points out that, notwithstanding a century of Dutch Elm Disease, a fungus spread by a beetle, both the American elm and slippery elm species, can still be found in the area.
Indeed, in Copake, outside the Kneller Insurance Agency, Kirk Kneller has been nursing a 100+ year old American elm with the help of Eric Haupt, whose Haupt Tree Company was recently acquired by Bartlett Tree Experts. Mr. Kneller says townspeople used to get married under the elm and call it the wedding tree.
Every few years, Mr. Haupt injects the Copake elm with a fungicide that is highly effective in protecting the wood from the destructive fungus. Mr. Haupt also takes care of a large elm to be found by the Town Hall in Great Barrington and another in Stockbridge, not to mention the sycamore at the Martin Van Buren site, another huge sycamore right outside the McDonald’s in Great Barrington and a pre-Revolutionary War oak at that town’s Simon’s Rock campus.
At the Siuslaw Model Forest on Route 23 in Acra, the Cornell Cooperative Extension for Columbia and Greene Counties measures its largest American elm to have a diameter of 28 inches (meaning, a circumference of about 7.3 feet). Shane Stevens, the extension’s Natural Resources Program Coordinator, estimates that the elm, like Mr. Kneller’s, is more than 100 years old. The tree is located by a stone wall that served as a livestock pasture boundary, proving shade for the livestock. The extension treasures its elm for having survived the disease that practically eliminated mature elms from the landscape but also worries that it may be showing signs of the disease.
While perhaps not state champions, many very old trees can also be found at the South Woods in Bard’s Montgomery Place campus which is approached by a beautiful allee of black locust trees.
As might be expected, the Catskill Mountains are also home to many stands of large and very old trees. Now-retired forestry professor Michael Kudish mapped them extensively in “The Catskill Forest: A History,” which he recently updated. Professor Kudish’s handwritten and illustrated field notes can be found on line at uvm.edu. The notes are sorted by hike so an interested explorer can literally follow in the professor’s footsteps and see the woods through his skilled eyes — as he saw them over the course of his walks.
The Landis Arboretum with its old growth forest spans more than 300 acres and the trees along its trails are labeled. A visitor can see a 250 year old red oak and another 15 oaks that exceed 150 years of age, from dawn to dusk and 365 days every year. The Landis website (Landisarboretum.org) has a calendar of events, which include big tree hunts, concerts and workshops.
Hunting for special trees is a lesson in change. As Dr. Canham notes, “many towns that relied on elms as street trees lost them to the disease many years ago and, in many cases, replaced them with ash (that are now being lost to emerald ash borer). The moral of the story is that life is precarious, even for such stately organisms.”
