The Second-Ranked American Basswood of Allison Woods

With this tree, all three of Cook County's top-ranked basswoods are on our map, and it is the odd one out. The champion and the third-ranked tree stand 730 metres apart in Busse Forest South, both exactly 24.4 metres tall. This second-ranked basswood, in Allison Woods, is five metres shorter at 19.5, 64 feet. It earns its place on the trunk: 3.61 metres round when the Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it on 15 July 2024, half a metre thicker than the third-ranked tree and 30 centimetres short of the champion. Its crown spreads about 17.7 metres one way and 15.5 the other. Basswood is the American linden, and the register gives both names. Our Roosendaal page holds a garden form of the same species, the Beatrixlinde of Nispen, planted in 1938: 2.83 metres round and 19 metres tall, almost this tree's height on a much slimmer trunk. About 1.4 kilometres to the north, in Dam No. 1 Woods East, stands the county's champion sugar maple, a lopsided tree with a trunk 3.53 metres round. The two make one outing. The pin is the register's GPS fix at the trunk, and we have found no trail description that leads to it. The register is the only source. It records size, rank and the date of measurement, and no age. Nobody has dated this basswood. If you know how old it is, tell us.