photo by Paul Jost 2001
Eleanor Tillinghast and Lee Frelich at the tree's base while Will Blozan measures the girth of the lower right branch and Michael Davies stands at the first fork of the lower right branch (look close!)

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New York Champion American Sycamore Platanus occidentalis Pine Plains, New York Circumference = 314 inches (26.2 feet) Height = 114 feet Av. Crown Spread = 144 feet Total Points = 463 Nominated: 1988 by:

The American Sycamore, also called Eastern Sycamore or American Planetree, is one of the largest eastern hardwoods. In appearance, perhaps the most distinctive, with an enlarged base, massive, straight, mottled trunk, large, spreading, often crooked branches forming a broad, open crown, and with "button balls" swinging in the air. Its distinctive mottled bark flakes off in puzzle-like pieces, exposing yellowish and whitish underbark.

Big tree hunters Will Blozan (left) of North Carolina and Lee Frelich of Minnesota stand at the base of the Pine Plains tree
photo by Paul Jost 2001

Identification & Culture

This fast-growing, long-lived, lowland tree prefers wet soils of stream banks, flood plains, lakeshores and swamp edges. A popular shade tree, Sycamore grows a larger diameter trunk than any other native eastern hardwood, reaching their greatest size in Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (see Washington Sycamores below), but unlike sequoias, redwoods and bristlecones of California, is old at 5-600 years.

Native Americans and French explorers used American Sycamore trunks for dugout canoes; one such craft was reported to be 65 feet long and weighed 9000 pounds. Hollow trunks of old giant trees were homes for chimney swifts in earlier times, and sheltered wood duck, opossum and raccoon.

This tremendous American Sycamore specimen is growing in a cornfield in eastern New York near the Massachusetts border. In October 2001, big tree experts from the Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS) visited the tree and tested their high tech tools for measuring big trees, including a $2000 impulse laser.

Colonial Champion Washington Sycamores "The largest trees known in America were the Washington Sycamores on Three Brother Island.   "When he visited the Ohio Valley in 1771, George Washington was amazed at their size, and estimated in his diary that one of the group was 61 feet in circumference." page 20 of West Virginia A Guide to the Mountain State ©1941 Oxford University Press sponsored by The Conservation Commission of West Virginia

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TERRA: The Earth Restoration and Reforestation Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 8/14/2003