The Second-Ranked Hackberry of Thatcher Woods

This hackberry stands 2.4 metres taller than the county's champion hackberry, 66 metres away, and the register still ranks it second. At 39 metres, 128 feet, it is the tallest of the three hackberries at the top of the Forest Preserves of Cook County's champion register. The champion beats it everywhere else: 3.51 metres round against this tree's 3.35, and a crown about 22 metres across both ways against this one's 19.5 by 15.5. The register crowns the stout tree, not the tall one. For a sense of what 39 metres means for the species, the only other common hackberry we have measured, the Leaning Hackberry of Parco Treves in Padua, is 9 metres tall. This one is more than four times that. The pair is the reason to come. Stand between them and you see one species on one patch of ground grown two ways, one taller and one stouter. The county's second-ranked silver maple stands about 30 metres to the south, and the second-ranked cottonwood, at 41.5 metres the one ranked tree here taller still, about 160 metres south. The register gives no date for this measurement and no age. It is the only source for the tree. Nobody has dated this hackberry. If you know how old it is, tell us.