The Bitternut Hickory of Thatcher Woods

This bitternut hickory stands 34 metres tall on a trunk only 1.92 metres round, about 61 centimetres across. That is a lot of tree on a slim stem. The Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it in November 2023 and ranked it third among the bitternut hickories on their land. Its height, 34.1 metres, matches the third-ranked hackberry at National Grove to the decimetre, on a trunk little more than half that tree's girth. Bitternut is a tree we rarely get to show. The only other one on our map grows in Ottawa's Dominion Arboretum, where it was planted between 1886 and 1890 and no girth is recorded. This one has measurements and no history; that one has history and no measurements. In Thatcher Woods it sits at the south-east end of the preserve's ranked trees: about 400 metres from the second-ranked cottonwood and about 580 metres from the champion hackberry. Walk the group from north to south and the hickory is where you finish. The county's champion register is the only source for it. It records size, rank and the measurement date, and nothing on age. Nobody has dated this hickory. If you know how old it is, tell us.