The Cottonwood of Thatcher Woods

At 41.5 metres, this cottonwood is the tallest tree anyone has measured on our Chicago map, and the Forest Preserves of Cook County still rank it only second among their cottonwoods. The trunk is just as far out of scale. Measured in July 2023, it is 5.94 metres round, the thickest recorded girth on this page. The crown is far from round: about 28 metres one way and only 17 the other. Somewhere else on preserve land stands a cottonwood the register puts ahead of it. It also anchors the best short walk on the page. About 130 metres to the north stands the county's second-ranked silver maple, and just beyond it the two ranked hackberries, the champion and its taller runner-up. A third-ranked bitternut hickory stands about 400 metres to the south-east. That is five register trees inside roughly 600 metres of the same woods. The nearest rival in size is another cottonwood, at National Grove about seven kilometres south: 5.82 metres round, 39 metres tall, and ranked third. Everything here comes from one source, the county's champion tree register, which records size, rank and place. It says nothing about age. Nobody has dated this cottonwood. If you know how old it is, tell us.