Miami's remarkable trees are mostly one man's doing and one forest's leftovers. Between 1914 and 1922 James Deering built Vizcaya on the Brickell Hammock, hoisting already large live oaks onto an artificial hill and buying more than a hundred Cuban royal palms, of which one survives. Simpson Park keeps 7.8 acres of the old hammock and a co-champion paradise tree. Further out stand a baobab in Miami Beach, a Coral Gables fig holding the last post of a packing house, and a champion false mastic near Homestead that was given up for dead after Hurricane Andrew. Only Vizcaya charges admission.
0 of 7 visited in Miami
Paradise Tree (Simarouba glauca) · The Roads / Brickell
This paradise tree shares the title of largest of its species in the United States. The Florida Forest Service lists it as a National Co-Champion: measured in 2009, it was 170 centimetres round, 16.8 metres tall and about 13 metres across the crown. Champion status is about size, not years, and nobody has dated it.
The setting is half the reason to come. Simpson Park is 7.8 acres of what remains of the Brickell Hammock, a scrap of tropical forest just south of downtown Miami, and the city's park brochure marks this tree as a stop on the numbered nature trail, labelled "Paradise Tree (Champion Tree)", behind the Charles Torrey Simpson Garden Center. The register's champion willow bustic grows in the same park.
One caution about which trunk. The register also lists a second paradise tree here, taller and thinner, still awaiting a verdict, and its own point for the champion sits about 100 metres from the brochure stop. Our pin is the brochure stop, so take the labelled tree on the trail as the one the city means.
Hurricane Irma stripped the hammock of its leaves in 2017, eight years after that measurement, and we have found no dated report of this particular tree since. The park is free, open daily from 8:00 to 17:00, with the east entrance closing at 16:00, and shut on holidays. If you know how old it is, tell us.
Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) · 100-220 years · Coconut Grove / Brickell Hammock
These four live oaks were already big trees when they were hoisted onto the top of a hill that had not existed a few years earlier. The Garden Mound at Vizcaya is artificial, built between 1914 and 1922 for James Deering's Miami estate, and Vizcaya's own account says the massive oaks were transported in and lifted onto it. A garden writer adds that they came from another Deering property.
How old they are depends on which caption you read. Vizcaya's label for the mound calls them 200-year-old, windswept live oaks; a video caption on the same page says 100. The garden writer says only that they were already large when moved, about a century ago. Nobody has published a girth that could settle it, so the honest answer is somewhere between one century and two.
What is certain is where they have spent the last hundred years: on an exposed hilltop in hurricane country. Vizcaya trims them regularly to make them more resilient when the storms come.
The four make a single stop. The mound sits at the south end of the formal gardens, up a short flight of stone steps, and the oaks are seen together from the top. Entry is paid, and Vizcaya opens Wednesday to Monday, closed on Tuesdays; check the hours before going. Vizcaya Metrorail station is about 500 metres from the entrance, a five to ten minute walk. Our pin marks the estate, not the mound itself.
Redberry Stopper (Eugenia confusa) · Coconut Grove / Brickell Hammock
The biggest redberry stopper known in the United States grows in the forest at Vizcaya, James Deering's estate in Miami. In December 2013 the Florida Forest Service measured it at 135 centimetres round at chest height and 17.4 metres tall, with a narrow crown about 7 by 4 metres, and named it National Champion for its species.
That is a claim about size. A stopper is a slender hammock tree, not a giant, and nobody has dated this one. Vizcaya, which owns the ground, is proud enough of it to caption a photograph "Red Stopper Champion Tree at Vizcaya", and says its forest holds eight known national champion trees.
There is a complication. The register carries several redberry stopper records at Vizcaya, and Vizcaya's caption does not say which one it shows. This record is the only one currently titled National Champion; the others are pending or emeritus. The measurement also predates Hurricane Irma in 2017, and we have not found a dated report of this tree since.
The stopper stands in the hammock, the forested part of the estate, on the register's coordinate, which we have not been able to tie to a particular crown. No source says whether the visitor paths reach it, so go knowing you may see the forest rather than the tree. Entry to Vizcaya is paid, and Vizcaya Metrorail station is about 500 metres from the gate. If you have found it on the ground, tell us where.
Royal Palm (Roystonea regia) · ~100 years · Coconut Grove / Brickell Hammock
James Deering bought more than a hundred royal palms in Cuba for his Miami estate. Vizcaya says one is left. Vizcaya publishes a photograph of a palm delivery dated 28 November 1921, and the shipments ran from about 1916 to that year, so the survivor has been standing here for roughly a century. That figure is worked out from the planting, not measured on the palm, and Vizcaya gives no year for this particular trunk.
It is also big. Vizcaya calls it a Florida Challenger, "the 4th largest Royal Palm", and the Florida Forest Service register agrees on the title: measured in April 2012, it stood 22.6 metres tall, with a trunk 152 centimetres round and a crown about 7.6 by 6.4 metres.
One honest gap. Vizcaya does not say where on the grounds its survivor stands, so we cannot prove the register's palm is the same one. It is the only royal palm the register records at Vizcaya, which makes it very likely, and our pin is the register's coordinate rather than a fix at the trunk.
The rest of the Cuban shipment is gone. Vizcaya's recent pages still say this one remains, though we have not seen a dated photograph of it. Entry to Vizcaya is paid, and Vizcaya Metrorail station is about 500 metres from the entrance.
False Mastic (Sideroxylon foetidissimum) · Redland / Leisure City
Hurricane Andrew was supposed to have killed this tree. After the storm of August 1992 the false mastic at Castellow Hammock was thought to have perished, and it was dropped as National Champion of its species. In October 1995, a note by R. Hammer on its register record says, it was found standing, with some crown loss and otherwise in good health.
It has the title back. The Florida Forest Service lists it as the National Champion false mastic, and when the county forester, Mark Torok, remeasured it in January 2020 it was 279 centimetres round at chest height and 26.2 metres tall, with a crown about 15 by 11 metres. He recorded it as mature and healthy, the latest word on it we have found.
Champion means biggest, not oldest, and nobody has published an age. If you know one, tell us.
The tree grows in Castellow Hammock Preserve, 112 acres of Miami-Dade County parkland in the Redland, near Homestead, with a half-mile self-guided trail over uneven, rocky limestone. Entry is free. The county gives hours of 9:00 to 17:00 every day, while the Florida Birding Trail says Wednesday to Sunday, so check before you drive. You will need a car.
One honest gap: no source says whether the champion stands beside the trail, and the register's own coordinate lands on a road about 700 metres east of the preserve, so we do not trust it. Our pin marks the middle of the preserve, not the trunk.
Fig (Ficus sp.) · Coral Gables (Country Club of Coral Gables Historic District)
All that is left of the Coral Gables Plantation's packing house is a wooden post inside a fig tree. The historical marker at the corner of Castile Avenue and South Greenway Drive says so in one dry line: "Post in fig tree only evidence remaining."
The Daughters of the American Revolution put the marker up. It records the packing house of the plantation established by the Rev. Solomon Greasley Merrick, then hands the rest of the job to the tree.
When Coral Gables ran its Tree of the Year contest for its centennial in 2025, residents nominated this fig three times over, as the Merrick fig, the Merrick Shack and the Merrick Post in the Fig. One nomination describes the packing house as survived by a single wooden plank, wedged between the aerial roots of a modest fig tree. Modest is fair. This is not a big tree, and it is on the map for what it is holding.
Which fig it is, nobody with authority has said. One nominator calls it a Florida strangler fig; the others say only fig, and so do we. Nobody has dated it either. If you know when it took hold, tell us.
It stands on a public street corner in Coral Gables, beside the Granada Golf Course, free to see from the pavement. The marker is on the right as you travel west on Castile Avenue, and the fig is at the marker. Our pin is the marker's position, not a surveyed trunk.
Baobab (Adansonia digitata) · Collins Park, Miami Beach
Miami Beach's urban forester once told visitors not to miss an African tree. Writing for the city in May 2015, Mark Williams said a visit to Collins Park to see the baobab should not be missed, and gave it a line of lore: in some African cultures, he wrote, the baobab is considered the Tree of Life, for its strength and size.
It did not get here on its own. The naturalists who log it on iNaturalist mark it as cultivated, which means somebody planted it, and nobody has published when. Nobody has published a girth or a height either, so we can tell you what it is but not how big. If you know when it went in, or have put a tape round it, tell us.
The plural in our name is deliberate. Baobabs in the park have been recorded about fifteen times between 2024 and 2026, and those records spread across some 80 metres, which suggests more than one tree. No source says which one the forester meant. The newest record is from July 2026, so at least one is standing.
Collins Park is a free public park run by the City of Miami Beach, on Collins Avenue at 21st Street, beside the Bass Museum. We have not found its opening hours. Our pin is the middle of that 80-metre spread, not a particular trunk, so look for the baobab rather than the dot.