The Silver Maple of Harms Flatwoods

Cook County's champion silver maple beats the runner-up in Thatcher Woods by five centimetres of trunk. The Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it on 1 August 2023: 4.32 metres round, 170 inches, the thickest silver maple in their champion register, and 24.9 metres tall. The Thatcher Woods maple, ranked second, has 4.27 metres of trunk and is about two metres taller. This one makes up for it in the crown, about 27 metres one way and 22 the other, against the Thatcher tree's 18.6 by 13. Two Dutch silver maples on our map come within a hair of it: the one in Tilburg's Leijpark is 4.30 metres round and the one at Gripper in Oss 4.31. Harms Flatwoods is an Illinois Nature Preserve. Visitors keep to the trails, and we cannot yet tell you whether this tree can be seen from one. If you find it from a trail, tell us where you stood; that is the most useful thing anyone could add to this page. About 820 metres to the south-west, in Harms Woods, stands the county's third-ranked bur oak, close enough to make the two one walk. The register is the only source and gives no age. Nobody has dated this maple. If you know how old it is, tell us.