The Champion Paradise Tree of Simpson Park

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.