The Chestnut Champion

Spokane opened a heritage tree register in 1998, and by 2012 it held exactly three trees. All three stand in the same small park on the South Hill, and this is the largest of them: a horse chestnut the city records at 102 feet tall with a crown just as wide. Take the figure with some caution. A mature horse chestnut usually stops between 50 and 80 feet, so 102 is either a genuinely exceptional tree or a generous measurement, and the register's own wording calls it a contender for state champion size rather than the champion. The identification splits as well, and that one you can settle yourself on the ground. The city lists it plainly as Aesculus hippocastanum. The 2012 survey by the Spokane tree collector Edward Lester, written up by HistoryLink, has it as the double-flowered cultivar Baumannii, believed to be the largest or second largest in Washington. Baumannii carries sterile double flowers, which means a spring of heavy white candles and then no conkers at all underneath it in autumn. It grows on ground that belonged to D.C. Corbin, who built railroads into the Inland Northwest and a house on the hill to go with them. The house is the Corbin Art Center now. The apricot behind it and the elm in the gardens next door are the other two trees on that 2012 list, so all three are one short walk.