The Pittsburgh Champion Bald Cypress of Mellon Park

Bald cypress is a swamp tree. It evolved in the flooded bottomlands of the American South, where it pushes woody knees up out of standing water, and it has no obvious business being the champion of anything in Pittsburgh. In March 2023 the city's Shade Tree Commission named this one exactly that: the largest bald cypress on public ground anywhere in the city. The title came out of an open call. The Remarkable Trees of Pittsburgh program, run by the Shade Tree Commission with Tree Pittsburgh, took 44 nominations from residents; 15 of them met the criteria, and the city's first list of remarkable trees was drawn from those. Three stand in Mellon Park, which was Pittsburgh's first public arboretum, and this is one of the three. November is when it does the thing that catches people out. It is a conifer and it is deciduous, which most trees have the decency not to be at the same time. The fine needles turn a foxy rust, come down over a couple of weeks, and leave a bare fluted trunk standing through the winter with nothing on it at all. No age, height or girth has been published for it. The city established that it is the biggest of its kind here and never wrote down by how much. If you know the numbers, send them.