The Sycamore of Riverside Lawn

Score Cook County's forest preserve champions the way the county does, and this sycamore beats every other tree in the register. The Forest Preserves of Cook County add a tree's trunk in inches, its height in feet and a quarter of its average crown width. This one comes to 313.86 points, the highest total they record. In metres: a trunk 3.91 round, a height of 41.5, and a crown about 30 metres one way and 28 the other. It shares the title of tallest tree on our Chicago map with the Thatcher Woods cottonwood, and no crown on this page spreads wider. No sycamore we list anywhere is taller. The Brandywine Sycamore in Pennsylvania and the Sunderland Buttonball Tree in Massachusetts are far thicker, but neither reaches 35 metres. The nearest in height, at Valley Garden Park in Wilmington, stops at 39.6. The county measured it on 9 February 2024, in midwinter. Riverside Lawn is a Forest Preserves site beside the Des Plaines River, in the village of Riverside; Metra's Riverside station on the BNSF line lies about 1.1 kilometres away in a straight line. National Grove's three ranked trees stand about two kilometres to the north-west, close enough to make one outing of it. The register is the only source for this tree. It ranks and measures, and records no age. Nobody has dated this sycamore. If you know how old it is, tell us.