The Swamp White Oak of Spears Woods

This swamp white oak is very nearly as wide as it is tall: a crown about 21 metres across in both directions, on a tree 21.9 metres high. The Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it on 24 July 2023 and ranked it second among the swamp white oaks on their land. The trunk is 3.38 metres round, 133 inches. The crown is about 21.3 metres one way and 20.4 the other, close to a circle. Our map holds two other swamp white oaks, the Sickles Witness Tree on the Gettysburg battlefield and one at the North Lookout in Ottawa, and neither carries a measured trunk on our pages. This one is the opposite case: a tree with a tape measure on it and no story behind it yet. Spears Woods makes a pair with Willow Springs Woods, about 1.8 kilometres to the west-north-west, where the county's champion black oak stands. The county measured both on the same day, and they could hardly look less alike: this oak low and round, that one 36.6 metres tall on a crown only about 14 metres across. A third tree measured that day, the second-ranked bald cypress at McGinnis Slough, stands about nine kilometres south. The register is the only source for this oak, and it records no age. Nobody has dated it. If you know how old it is, tell us.