Japanese Chestnut at Saint John the Apostle

For a while nobody could agree what this tree was. Nominated to Virginia Tech's big-tree database in 2015, it was first listed as a European chestnut. The American Chestnut Foundation took a closer look and concluded it was a Japanese chestnut, partly because it is very old and shows no sign of chestnut blight, the disease that wiped out the American chestnut and that Asian chestnuts largely shrug off. It grows on the grounds of Saint John the Apostle Catholic Church in Leesburg, just north of a spring house at a sharp turn of Church Street. In 2015 its trunk was 161 inches round. When the Loudoun County forester remeasured it in 2025 it had reached 171 inches, about 4.3 metres, with a height of 54 feet (16.5 metres) and a crown 55 feet across. That is a tree as wide as it is tall. Whether it is a state champion depends on whom you ask. The county's 2025 list marks it as Virginia's champion Japanese chestnut. The Virginia Tech record says it is not. The two sources disagree, and neither explains why. It has company. A shellbark hickory stands about seven metres away, and two more county-registered trees, a silver linden and an Atlantic white cedar, are within a hundred metres on the same grounds. No source dates any of them. If you know when the chestnut was planted, or who brought it to Leesburg, tell us.