Holy chit! How big you think DBH is? I couldve grabbed sycamore last January from Asplundh cutting in the neighborhood. Trunk had to be 4' DBH. I rate it with elm for "ease" of splitting.
My best guess is about 6' DBH. I have several 4' trees around me and this thing dwarfs them. The tree is closer to the camera, but you can see how it compares to the house door behind it. Massive canopy to boot. Everything I've heard about Sycamore for firewood was not good. Pretty impressive looking trees though. The Buttonball in MA and the Pinchot in CT.
I have a Striped Maple in my yard that also has pretty substantial leaves. I didn't measure them before they fell, but they're probably 9"x12"
I noticed the size of the oak leaves also this year, biggest I can remember. Another wierd thing is no acorns from red or white oaks this year, anywhere in my area. The free range meat is going to be hurting. I have a bunch of deer coming through every night. The other night I smashed up pumpkins for them, I counted 12 deer. The next night they were back looking for more. They know now that we toss food to them, I tossed a bunch of apple cores out, and they couldn't get to them fast enough.
Interesting. It was acorns galore here this year. There was one spot that you were guaranteed to get at least one bounced off the truck driving by for a couple weeks.
That leaf is amazing. Many times young sassafras will also grow huge leaves. On the acorns, our red oaks gave a good crop this year but almost nothing on white oaks. Neighbor and I were discussing the acorns and it has been probably 20 years or more since we've had a super acorn crop. I think it was back in the early 90's.
Deer and squirrels have found a good red acorn crop here, but almost no white oak acorns here as well. The acorns are fairly small though, likely due to the drought.
Yeah its not great firewood, esp since it is so hard to process. You end up with just a bunch of chunks of wood because it doesnt split. It does make great looking boards tho. All those big sycamores are completely hollow in the center.
