The Sugar Maple of Busse Forest South

This sugar maple stands 36.6 metres tall, 120 feet, and the Forest Preserves of Cook County rank it second among all the sugar maples on their land. Their champion tree register measured it on 25 August 2023: a trunk 2.47 metres round at chest height, and a crown spreading 22 metres one way and only 12 the other. That shape is what makes it worth the walk. A trunk under two and a half metres round is slim for a tree of this height, and the narrow crown tells the same story: this maple went up rather than out. Compare the Comfort Maple in Pelham, Ontario, another sugar maple on our map, whose trunk is six metres round. The Busse tree carries well under half that girth, yet the county's champion hackberry at Thatcher Woods, the biggest of its kind on preserve land, is recorded at exactly the same 120 feet. Busse Forest South holds two more ranked trees: the county's champion basswood, about two and a half kilometres to the west, and its third-ranked basswood a little further north. Three register trees in one preserve make an afternoon of it. The register records size, rank and place, and nothing about age. Nobody has dated this maple. If you know how old it is, or what stood here before the preserve, tell us. Come in October, when sugar maples colour.