Kansas City's most remarkable trees are not scattered across parks and cemeteries: all four grow on one library lawn. The Linda Hall Library, a private research library near the UMKC campus, has spent decades measuring and cataloguing its grounds for the Champion Tree Program of Greater Kansas City, and four of its specimens are now the largest of their kind anywhere in the metro. An oak, a double-flowered horsechestnut, a purple beech and the last living relative of its own botanical family, all free to walk among, dawn to dusk.
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The Shumard Oak of Linda Hall Library
Shumard Oak (Quercus shumardii) · about 58 years · Rockhill / UMKC area
The largest Shumard oak in greater Kansas City grows on a library lawn, and the library knows it by number. It is 34-21-1 in the Linda Hall Library arboretum's own catalogue, one of the sixteen trees the Champion Tree Program of Greater Kansas City records as the biggest of their kind in the metro. That programme has been keeping score since 1955, when the J.C. Nichols Company's landscaping department started measuring the city's trees.
This one is not old. It went into the ground in 1968 as nursery stock from Rosehill, which makes it a contemporary of the Apollo programme rather than of anything medieval. What it has instead is speed. Shumard oak is a bottomland tree of the southern and central states, built for deep soil and steady water, and on a watered institutional lawn it behaves accordingly. At the 2008 survey the trunk measured 83 inches round, 211 centimetres, under a crown 61 feet tall and 45 feet across. No newer figure has been published, and close to two decades of growth have gone onto the trunk since.
Everything on record here comes from the library's own arboretum files. No outside surveyor has put a tape around it, so treat the numbers as the institution's rather than as a second opinion. The grounds are free and open dawn to dusk, and the oak stands on them as a catalogued specimen rather than as landscaping.
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The Double Flowered Horsechestnut of Linda Hall Library
Double Flowered Horsechestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum 'Baumannii') · about 70 years · Rockhill / UMKC area
This horsechestnut has never dropped a conker, and it never will. 'Baumannii' is the double-flowered form of the common horsechestnut, bred so that the flower doubles its petals and loses the ability to set fruit. What you get in exchange is a longer, heavier bloom and a lawn nobody has to sweep, which is a fair trade unless you are a child collecting conkers.
It was planted in 1956, about a hundred feet from the northeast corner of the main library building, and it sits on the Greater Kansas City champion list as 2-4-1, the largest known of its kind in the metro. The library's own survey, taken around 2008, puts the trunk at 91 inches round, 231 centimetres, under a crown 40 feet across.
The height is disputed. The library says 54 feet. A Kansas City gardening magazine that visited in 2017 says 80. Nobody has reconciled the two, and the gap is wider than nine years of growth can explain, so the honest answer is somewhere between them, and worth judging with your own neck.
Late April into May is when the argument stops mattering. The whole crown goes up in white double candles for two or three weeks, and then nothing falls.
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3
The Rivers Purple Beech of Linda Hall Library
Rivers Purple Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Riversii') · about 55 years · Rockhill / UMKC area
European beech is a tree of cool, damp woodland. Kansas City summers are neither, which is what makes this one quietly impressive.
'Riversii' is a selected purple form of the common European beech, kept going by grafting because the colour does not come reliably from seed. The leaves open a deep red-purple in spring and hold close to it through the season, so this is one of the few trees on these grounds with no single week that beats the others. It looks like this in June and it looks like this in September.
It went into the ground in 1971 as Rosehill Nursery stock and carries the tag 14-2-1 on the Greater Kansas City champion list, the largest of its kind anybody in the metro has registered. At the 2008 survey the trunk was 85 inches round, 216 centimetres, under a crown 43 feet tall. The same table gives its spread as 42 inches, which would make it a broomstick; it is almost certainly 42 feet and a slipped unit, so we have left the number out rather than quietly repair somebody else's arithmetic.
Everything above comes from one institution counted twice, the library's arboretum pages and its own subject guide. Nobody outside has put a tape around this trunk, and the last figures anyone published are nearly two decades old. If you have measured it more recently, tell us and we will update it.
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4
The Hardy Rubber Tree of Linda Hall Library
Hardy Rubber Tree (Eucommia ulmoides) · about 51 years · Rockhill / UMKC area
A torn leaf of this tree does not come apart cleanly. The two halves hang together on fine threads of latex, and that is where the hardy rubber tree gets its name.
Eucommia ulmoides is the last of its line. It is the only living species in its family, a Chinese tree with no close relatives left anywhere. In Western gardens it is stranger still: the trees in cultivation are a male clone, so they flower every year and have never set a seed.
This one was planted in 1975 in the southeast corner of the grounds, and it is registered as 13b-1-1 on the Greater Kansas City champion list. The library's survey around 2008 gave it 29 inches of trunk, 74 centimetres, standing 26 feet tall with a 33 foot spread. A Kansas City gardening magazine that came by in 2017 put it at 35 feet and expected it to reach 50 in time. Those two heights do not contradict each other; they are nine years apart, and the tree was doing what trees do in between.
Being the metro champion of a species almost nobody plants is a title won in a thin field, and it is worth the detour regardless. The grounds are free and open dawn to dusk. This is the least imposing tree on the list and the only one with no relatives.
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