The Sunderland Buttonball Tree

The plaque at its foot dates the tree against the US Constitution. It was already standing, and already large, when the document was signed in 1787. Tradition has it seeded before 1665, which puts it well over three hundred and fifty years old and by some accounts near four hundred. That is tradition rather than a count of rings, and it is worth saying so, but the measurements are consistent with an old tree: 782 centimetres round at chest height when it was last measured in 2019, over thirty four metres tall, with a crown spreading forty three metres. It is widely called the largest tree in Massachusetts. The local line goes further and calls it the widest tree this side of the Mississippi, which is a saying rather than a survey. Buttonball is the New England name for the American sycamore, and it comes from the seed balls that hang on the bare limbs through the winter before breaking apart in spring. There is no gate, no ticket and no path to find. It stands on the verge of North Main Street in the middle of the village, so you park, walk over and put a hand on the bark. The commemorative plaque went in beside it in 1987, roughly three hundred and twenty years into the tree's life.