The Tulip Tree of First State National Historical Park

This tulip tree is 53 metres tall, and Delaware still ranks it second. The Delaware Forest Service measured it at 174 feet, with a trunk 546 centimetres round and a crown averaging about 37 metres across, and placed it behind the state champion at Winterthur, a few kilometres to the west, which is two metres shorter and noticeably thicker. Big tree registers score the whole tree, trunk and crown as well as height, so the tallest does not automatically win. For scale: the Davie Poplar in Chapel Hill, the best known tulip tree we publish in the American South, stands 30.5 metres. The tallest European ones on our map, in Geneva and Copenhagen, reach 30 and 26.5. This one clears every one of them by more than twenty metres, which makes it the tallest measured tulip tree on this site. It grows on the grounds of First State National Historical Park, about ten kilometres north of downtown Wilmington and outside the city itself. Entry is free. The register's ranking dates from November 2024, and a dated observation at the spot within the last four years says it was still standing then. What the register does not give is an age. Nobody has dated this tree, as far as we can find, and no planting record turns up. If you know its history, or have a tape and an afternoon, tell us.