Logan sits in the Hocking Hills, and the oldest thing in the town grows on the northeast corner of its old cemetery. The Great White Oak has stood there for roughly six centuries, its limbs leaving the trunk sideways rather than upward. The town has organised itself around keeping it going: the Tree Commission gathers the acorns, raises them into saplings and sells them as a fundraiser, so there are young oaks all over Hocking County with this one as the parent.
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The Great White Oak of Logan (Logan Oak)
White Oak (Quercus alba) · roughly 600 years · North side of Logan, Hocking County
Logan sells this tree's children. The town's Tree Commission gathers acorns from underneath it, raises them into saplings and sells them as a fundraiser, which is a fairly literal way of keeping a tree going.
The parent is a white oak on the northeast corner of Old Logan Cemetery, put at roughly six hundred years, with a defensible range of five hundred to six hundred and fifty. Ohio's Department of Natural Resources checked the age about thirty years ago and nobody wrote down how, so treat that figure as a good estimate rather than a count of rings. Either way, it was standing here well before any European reached the Ohio valley.
What people come for is the shape. An Ohio naturalist spent an hour photographing it from every angle in 2019 and called it easily the largest and most ornate white oak he had seen: huge gnarled limbs leaving the trunk sideways rather than upward, the frame an oak only builds when it has room and several centuries. Its least likely honour came in 2022, when it turned up as an answer on College Jeopardy.
Nobody appears to have put a tape around it. If you have, tell us.
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