The Dunkeld Douglas Fir

The Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust says the grounds of Dunkeld House hold the Douglas fir with the largest girth in Britain. The Trust does not say who measured it or when, so treat the record as a claim. A tree blogger who visited in 2026 put this trunk at more than 7 metres round. It has paid for that bulk with its top. The same visitor gives it as about 30 metres tall since it lost its crown, an oddly topped tree with deeply fissured bark. The blog also says it is about 180 years old and was planted in 1846 as a gift to the Duke of Atholl. That is one source, and we have not found a second, so read the date as likely rather than settled. Its neighbours have had a harder time. Cathedral Grove, the stand of conifers behind Dunkeld Cathedral, lost many trees in a storm in December 2011, and it is being replanted with rare conifers under the Perthshire Conifer Conservation Programme. This fir came through, and it was still standing when the blogger photographed it in 2026. It grows a few metres from the Parent Larch, the sole survivor of the larches planted here in 1738, so one short stop covers both. They are free to walk up to in the cathedral grounds. We have no photograph of this one yet, and if you take one, we would like to see it.