New state champion trees

Yesterday, I accompanied one of our student workers to a property near his hometown of Des Arc, Arkansas. Brother Bill may remember Des Arc--the last time he visited us, we went to this town after our morning at the archeological site to see their "Steamboat Days" festival. For the rest of y'all, Des Arc is probably about an hour or less east of Little Rock, north of I-40.

This property was on the banks of the White River, a rather large river that flows out of the Ozarks of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri onto the Mississippi River Delta lands in eastern Arkansas (including the Big Woods area, which has the White River and Cache River national wildlife refuges, home of the ivory-billed woodpecker). We were there to see some of the big timber in this property, including a tree that the student believed was the new state champion.

After a couple hour drive through the rice, cotton, soybean, and corn fields of eastern Arkansas, we arrived at the property. We drove past the locked gate (this is private land) and through a confusing network of small but well kept jeep trails. After a few minutes, we arrived in the stand of timber the big oak was located in. These bottomland hardwood forests are an explosion of green vegetation this time of year--this stand was particularly lush, with vines and cane thickets (think bamboo), birds chattering, and a deep, dark canopy looming over the muggy, still air along the ground. Probably the closest thing to a jungle that I've been in to date.

The big oak lived up to its billing (our student Brad is standing next to this tree in the picture above). This tree is a swamp chestnut oak, named largely because its leaves are similar to those of the chestnut (a separate species). This particular tree was conservatively measured at 70 inches in diameter (yes, almost 6 feet), 112 feet tall, and with a crown spreading over 106 feet wide. Given the point system used to score these trees, it easily bested the next largest one listed. And yes, those vines covering the trunk of this tree were mostly poison ivy (Brad handled, as he isn't really allergic to poison ivy--I don't know if I am).

After measuring this tree and recording the information, Brad took me over to an old stream channel that had some big ol' baldcypress growing in it. The channel has gradually filled over the years, but the cypress are still thriving. The biggest of these cypress is pictured below, and while not particularly tall--"only" 105 feet tall (the pines on Mom and Dad's land are about 100 feet tall)--this cypress measured in at 81.7 inches in diameter (almost 7 feet!). Given the nature of this tree, I'm confident it is hundreds of years old, and perhaps pushes 1,000 years--I know a researcher who has dated comparable cypress trees in this area as that old! Brad is the tiny guy standing next to the tree...

Our final "discovery" for the day came as we were walking back to the truck from these cypress. We came across a twisted, wolfly looking hardwood that we had spotted from the road at some distance, but didn't think it worthy of a closer look at that time. However, when we walked up on this tree, we realized it was quite large for the species it was... This honeylocust (pictured below) turned out to be just over 50 inches in diameter, almost 100 feet tall, with a 64 foot crown spread--a new state champion!!

Brad is going to submit the paper work on these trees, but he was very proud to have found two new state champions. I was happy, too, as I got to see some impressive timber--although the chigger bites I'm suffering through today are a reminder how different the Arkansas woods are than those I grew up in!