This pin oak's crown spreads about 26 metres one way and 22 the other, on a tree only 29 metres tall. It is the champion pin oak of the Forest Preserves of Cook County, first among all those on preserve land, and it is nearly as wide as it is high. The trunk is 3.59 metres round. Put the tree beside the county's champion white oak at Red Gate Woods, itself notable for a broad, even crown: that oak is 29.3 metres tall, almost the same, yet its crown is about three metres narrower across its widest line. No crown among the Cook County champions on our Chicago page spreads further than this one. Pin oaks are familiar on our map from the other side of the Atlantic. We list them in Dutch parks in Haarlem, Apeldoorn, Eindhoven and Sittard, where the registers record planting dates between the 1860s and about 1910. None of those carries a measured trunk or crown on our pages, so this champion is the first pin oak we can describe in numbers. Rolling Knolls lies at the far western edge of the trees on this page, a trip of its own rather than part of a walk. The register records no measurement date and no age. Nobody has dated this oak. If you know how old it is, tell us.
Rolling Knolls, Forest Preserves of Cook County, IllinoisYou can recognise it by the crown, about 26 by 22 metres, nearly as wide as the 29-metre tree is tall, over a trunk 3.59 metres round. It stands at the register's point in Rolling Knolls.
Free, a Forest Preserves of Cook County site open to the public (register Public_Access: Yes).
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.