The oldest oak in this grove has been estimated at 325 to 375 years, which would make it roughly two centuries older than the city around it.
Bur Oak
Quercus macrocarpa
The bur oak is the prairie oak, its bark thick enough to survive the grass fires that once kept the American Midwest open, so the old ones are survivors of the savanna that cities were built across. We map 14 of them, in 9 cities.
The Big Tree in the Missouri river bottoms near McBaine was already about two hundred years old when Lewis and Clark came up the river in 1804; it is 7.3 metres round and the national champion of its species. In Indianapolis, Mae Kile refused to sell her house to anyone who would not promise to keep the oak. Chicago keeps several. One in the grove on Wooded Island blew down around 2016 and its rings were counted back to roughly 1730, and the oak on the Midway Plaisance was the one tree left standing when the ground was cleared for the 1893 World's Fair.
Chicago
When the Midway Plaisance was cleared and regraded for the 1893 World's Fair, one tree was left standing, and this is it.
In fruit
One of these oaks blew down around 2016, and its rings were counted back to roughly 1730.
Local history holds that this bur oak was a witness tree, a landmark the Potawatomi used to find the route back to the Des Plaines River after a hunt.
Washington DC
In the 1930s Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. cleared about 250 trees out of Union Square and transplanted 41 more.
Columbia, Missouri
In fruit
When Lewis and Clark came up the Missouri in 1804, this bur oak was already about two hundred years old.
Photo: Heath Cajandig (CC BY 2.0)
Boise
Idaho's biggest bur oak is a tree that does not grow wild anywhere near Idaho.
Dallas
This bur oak was already a mature tree when John Neely Bryan turned up in 1841 and founded the city.
Sam Houston camped at this spring in the summer of 1843 with his Indian treaty delegation, and by the account of the arborists who later dated it, the bur oak beside the water was already about six...
The ground under this bur oak was a campsite while Texas was still its own country.
Fort Worth
In 1845 a surveyor chose this bur oak to mark the land, and it is still here to be found.
Indianapolis
Mae Kile would not sell her house to anybody who refused to promise to keep the oak.
Minneapolis
The tornado that tore through north Minneapolis in 2011 hit this bur oak and did not finish it.
Ottawa
Bur oak is built to survive what kills other trees.
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