The Chestnut Champion
How do I find it? Look for a large, gnarled horse chestnut near the Corbin Art Center building in Edwidge Woldson Park. If it is the Baumannii cultivar, it flowers heavily in spring but sets no nuts, unlike an ordinary horse chestnut.
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.
- Species
- Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), likely the double-flowered cultivar 'Baumannii'
- Age estimate
- not documented
- Location
- Edwidge Woldson Park (formerly Pioneer Park), near the Corbin Art Center, 507 W 7th Avenue, Spokane, WA 99204 (South Hill (Moore-Turner Heritage Gardens / Corbin Art Center area))
- Access
- Free, public city park (Edwidge Woldson Park). A Spokesman-Review caption (seen only as an unfetchable WebSearch snippet, spokesman.com/galleries/2019/may/07/spokanes-most-unique-and-historic-trees/, 403 to both curl and WebFetch) describes it as standing 'in front of the Corbin Arts Center', which reads as the open park rather than the fenced Moore-Turner Heritage Gardens next door. Those Gardens keep seasonal hours (May 16 to September 15, Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 3:30pm, closed Mondays, per my.spokanecity.org/parks/gardens/moore-turner/); this tree's exact position relative to that fence line is not independently confirmed, so treat the seasonal note as a caveat rather than a certainty.
- Getting there
- South Hill, near W 7th Avenue and S Stevens Street; car recommended, city bus service runs along 7th Avenue
The button above opens directions in your maps app.
Sources
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