Shumard Oak at Algonkian Regional Park

Loudoun County counts this Shumard oak among the largest trees in the whole county, and it stands not in a town square but out on the trails of Algonkian Regional Park, near Sugarland Run in Sterling. The county's caption gives it as 109 feet high, 184 inches round the trunk and about 200 years old. The 2025 registry figures put numbers on the rest. The trunk is about 4.7 metres round, the tree 33.2 metres tall, and the crown spreads 83 feet, for 313.75 points. An older figure, quoted by The Nature Conservancy's Virginia public lands page, gave it 112 feet and 176 inches. Measurements drift between surveys, and the county's are the latest. Shumard oak is a red oak of southern bottomlands and stream banks, a big, fast tree with deeply cut, bristle-tipped leaves. The 200-year figure is the county's estimate, and it does not say how it was reached, so treat it as a forester's judgement rather than a date. If it holds, the oak was a sapling in the early 1800s. This is the far outlier on the Leesburg page. Sterling is about 20 kilometres east of downtown, 25 to 30 minutes by car on Route 7, with no useful bus. Algonkian is a NOVA Parks park and may charge for parking at busy times, so check before you go.