The Silver Maple of Thatcher Woods
This silver maple's trunk is 4.27 metres round, and in October 2023 the Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it as the second-biggest silver maple on all their land. It stands 26.8 metres tall, with a crown about 18.6 metres across one way and 13 the other. Four metres of girth is a lot of trunk for a silver maple. On our own map, the Silver Maple of Wołoska in Warsaw measures 3.39 metres round at 20 metres tall, and Bruges' Canada Tree, planted in 1947, measures 2.44. Only two silver maples we list with a recorded girth are thicker: one in Warsaw's Park Zaslawa Malickiego at 5.02 metres, and Montreal's McKenna Silver Maple at 5.81. What makes Thatcher Woods unusual is the company. Within 80 metres of this maple the register lists two more ranked trees, both hackberries: the county's champion, and its second-ranked, which at 39 metres is the taller of the two. Three register trees inside one short loop make this the easiest stop of the lot. The register gives size, rank and place, and nothing more: no planting date, no history, no age. Nobody has dated this maple. If you know how old it is, or have photographs of it from years back, tell us.
dense clusters of small red and yellow flowers on bare twigs, very earlywinged seeds ripen in spring, unlike most maplesusually pale yellow, sometimes orange or red
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Thatcher Woods, Forest Preserves of Cook County, IllinoisYou can recognise it by the thick trunk, 4.27 metres round, on a maple about 27 metres tall. It stands in Thatcher Woods roughly 30 metres from the taller second-ranked hackberry.
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.