Lady Liberty
United StatesLongwoodBig Tree Park
For about two thousand years, Lady Liberty grew forty feet from an older neighbour. Since 2012 she has been the oldest tree in her park. The neighbour was The Senator, a bald cypress usually put at 3,500 years old and 47 feet round, one of Florida's oldest tourist attractions. In 2012 a fire lit inside its hollow base burned it down. Lady Liberty, also a bald cypress, is the one that is left, and the county's historic marker calls her the Companion tree or the Sister tree. Her age is an estimate, about 2,000 years, from that Seminole County marker; nobody has published a ring count. Her size is measured, twice and slightly differently: 389 inches round and 89 feet tall on the marker, 394 inches and 82 feet in the Florida Forest Service's champion tree register. Either way the trunk is about ten metres round. Her name came much later. Students from Geneva Elementary School gave it to her in 2005. She now carries a lightning rod, because, as a biologist told Spectrum News in 2026, Florida is "a lightning capital of the world". She stands beside the boardwalk in Big Tree Park in Longwood, a free Seminole County park, open daily from 8 a.m.
Autumn colour
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Big Tree Park, 761 General Hutchison Parkway, Longwood, FL 32750You can recognise it by the fenced trunk, about ten metres round, beside the park's boardwalk. It stands about 40 feet from the spot where The Senator grew.
Free. Big Tree Park, a Seminole County park, open daily from 8 a.m. until sunset (the county also gives 6 p.m.). A short boardwalk leads to the fenced tree; restrooms in the park.
By car, or by bike: the park is a trailhead on the Cross Seminole Trail.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.