Atlantic White Cedar at Saint John the Apostle

Virginia's champion Atlantic white cedar does not grow in a swamp. It grows on a church lawn in Leesburg, far inland from the coastal wetlands where its species belongs. Atlantic white cedar is a tree of the Atlantic coastal plain, a narrow evergreen of bogs and swampy ground along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. This one stands on the grounds of Saint John the Apostle Catholic Church, on Church Street NE, and the Loudoun County Big Tree Registry measured it in 2025 at 58 feet tall (17.7 metres), with a trunk 125 inches round (about 3.2 metres) and a crown only 31 feet across. That slim shape is typical of the species. Its score of 191 points puts it at the top of Virginia's list for its kind, according to the county. How it got here is a mystery. No source we have found says who planted it or when, and nobody has dated it. A swamp cedar on a Piedmont church lawn was almost certainly planted, and the parish or the town may remember by whom. If you know, tell us. It is one of four registered trees on these grounds, all within about a hundred metres of each other. The others are a Japanese chestnut, a shellbark hickory and a silver linden that is itself a Virginia champion. The cedar is the evergreen among them, standing about 45 metres east of the chestnut.