The Leschi Park Tulip Tree

Seattle once realigned a Capitol Hill street to make room for a tulip tree. The one in Leschi Park is bigger: 106 feet tall to that tree's 92, and 52 inches across the trunk to its 46. Those figures come from the city's tree records, which list it as a Heritage Tree on park land, about 32 metres high with a crown 74 feet wide. Across 52 inches of diameter, the trunk works out at roughly 13 and a half feet round, a little over four metres. The records are also the only source for it, and they are not new. A city crew last noted the tree in service in August 2019. A naturalist photographed a plant close to the city's point for it in June 2026, but whether that picture shows this trunk is not certain, so treat the 2019 entry as the firm word on it. The pin sits at that city point inside the park; the crown itself has not been checked against it. A tulip tree is a magnolia relative, not a poplar, whatever its old nickname says. Its leaves have four lobes and a tip cut off square, which is the quickest way to tell it from a maple. Leschi Park is free and open from six in the morning until ten at night. Nobody has published an age for this tree. If you know when it was planted, tell us.