The Sycamore of Valley Garden Park

This sycamore spreads almost as wide as it stands tall. The Delaware Forest Service measured it at 39.6 metres high with a crown averaging 38.7 metres across, which leaves barely a metre between the two numbers. The trunk is 589 centimetres round. Those numbers put it ahead of the best known sycamore in the region. The Brandywine Sycamore at Chadds Ford, across the Pennsylvania line to the north, the tree the Battle of Brandywine was fought around in 1777, measures 559 centimetres and 33.8 metres. This one is thicker by 30 centimetres and taller by nearly six metres. Of the American sycamores we publish, it is the tallest; the trunks at Sunderland in Massachusetts and Simsbury in Connecticut are much wider, at 782 and 884, but neither reaches 35 metres. Even so, the state ranks it only second in Delaware, which says something about how big Delaware's sycamores grow. The ranking dates from November 2024, and a dated observation at the spot within the last four years confirms it was alive then. It stands in Valley Garden Park, about seven kilometres northwest of downtown Wilmington and outside the city, on free public ground. Unlike its Chadds Ford neighbour, it has no battle attached and no recorded age. If you know how old it is, or what the ground was before it became a park, tell us.