We determined in another thread that a lot of members have multiple acres of land. I'm curious what are your biggest trees on your land? I measured a few contenders. I decided to do DBH (diameter at breast height), or 4.5' off the ground. Any fractions of an inch on the DBH I rounded down or up to the closest whole inch. Obviously stump measurements would be far greater due to flares, etc. The stump diameters on these trees are all 4-8” greater than the DBH. First up is what would have been the largest tree. Due to splitting off into 5 trunks, I could only get a stump circumference. As you can see, it measured in at 17'3', or 207", which means the stump diameter is about 5'6", or 66" The largest trunk of this tree is 6'1", or 73" As for single trunk trees. Here are my top three. In third place is this treehouse Red Oak. Measuring in at 9'10", or 118". The DBH is about 3'2", or 38" In second place is another Red Oak. I call it the far end Oak, as its on the far end of my property, over a quarter mile from my house. It measured in at 11'9", or 141". The DBH is about 3'9", or 45".
The winner, is what I believe is an old Sugar Maple. I call it the trail end Maple, as it sits on the end of my current trail loop. It measured in at 12'2", or 146". The DBH is about 3'10", or 46"
Not on our land, the tree was formerly on school property...but the biggest one I've "scored" was before cell phones were in every pocket...although I did get a pic of it on an old flip phone, that no longer works This section of trunk was well over 5' across, and 11' 6" long (tall)...it was a multi-century old maple that was to be used for carving a giant pineapple for a local grocery store, but when the carver started on it they found the center was punky...they cut a few smaller chunks off it to make smaller pineapples, and the rest just stood there for weeks (yes, it was standing upright in the parking lot) I finally inquired as to what they were going to do with it, I got an enthusiastic "you want it?" It had been placed there by a local tree trimmer (the one that took the tree down) using a crane, and now they couldn't find anyone that was willing to come take it (without paying big $$) We loaded up a forklift and a dump trailer and went at it...turns out the forklift wouldn't pick it up (5K rated forklift, but will pick more) so we had to back the trailer up to it, raise the bed, and push the log over into it...then I used the forklift to lift/push the butt of the log into the trailer as the bed was lowered. It was funny, we were concentrating on what we were doing so much that we hadn't noticed that a small crowd had assembled to watch. I wish we had kept track of how much firewood came from that log (probably over 2 cords)...calculating the size of it, it would have been about 273 cu ft! I don't recall what type of maple it was, but using 45 lbs per cu ft. (green) for the weight, that's 12, 285 lbs...yeah, not gonna pick that with a 5k forklift! Heck, even the trailer was a bit overloaded, since it has (2) 7k axles...good thing we weren't going far!
Once you get into the bigguns’ every extra inch of diameter adds a lot of weight. A 12 foot long log x 60” diameter would mean an extra 15.7 cubic feet for 1” of extra diameter. You could easily be talking an extra 700-800 lbs for that extra inch.
Biggest I dealt with was a 54" dbh Red Oak. Somewhere I've pics still I think. 5 cord outta that tree & don't ever wanna do another one. Biggest on my property is about 30" Cherry.
When did your land revert back to woods from fields? Trees 2 and 3 look like classic wolf trees. That is a tree that was not cut when the land was fields. I bet that sugar maple has old tap holes hidden within if it’s not rotted hollow.
I’m not sure. I know they logged it in approx 1992. There are quite a few stone walls, as is typical in a lot of New England. I’m sure at some point in the distant past it was fields. Kind of cool to think back. If only these trees could talk.
Along one side of my land is a stone wall that runs for about 1500 ft and abuts a multiple hundreds acre piece of land. Along that wall on their side is pretty much exclusive scrub Pine for a few hundred yard stretch, as far back as you can see. All small junk wood, mostly dead and only in the 4-8” diameter range. A lot of it is tangled up in other trees from storms blowing through. It’s so thick you can hardly walk in their. Then you step over the wall and my woods are spaced out with mostly bigger mature trees. A good mix of softwoods and hardwoods. Must be due to how and when they were logged.
My Dad and I used to cut on a Euc grove right on the edge of McClellan AFB, long time ago (late 90's). I have no idea what those trees were tapped into but they grew large and tall, the newer ones were well over 36" D and 100+ ft tall. I'd fall some of the larger ones with a 36" bar with cuts on both sides, and most times before I finished my back cut my Dad would be tugging on my belt to back off to safe space. 10 seconds or more later car alarms for miles around would be going off. The kids with M-16s would routinely come visit and marvel at what caused them to show up. We had tons of fun talking to them and on occasion they'd help us load. They'd always understand after the first few rounds what made all the noise! No picts but I wish we had some! We used to cut in Blodgett before that and wow, just wow.
Not sure of the biggest here. Have to take a walk in the woods and get some measurements. I know there is a couple big uns out there.
The biggest tree on my moms property (where I cut) is this red oak. Not big by some standards but big for our woods. It’s 123” circumference at chest high. The trunk is straight as an arrow with no limbs until about 25’ up and it doesn’t narrow much at all. The first branches are around 2’ in diameter. I’ve often wondered how many cords are in this tree but I hope I never have to find out.
The Red Oak I took down at my SIL's was oblong 41"x50" and I took about 4 cords out of there, and there is another cord or so still there that they are taking. Your tree is 123" circ. which is about 39" DBH. Pretty similar in size, maybe a hair smaller as mine was a stump measurement. Pretty close in height I'd say. 4-5 cords is certainly possible. Big Red Oaks produce a ton of easy splits
Slaying the big monsters is satisfying, yet sad at the same time. You realize how long that tree has been alive, but then again many of them are dead or dying by the time they get to be that big and old.
Not a tree on my land, but here's a fun one, Was splitting wood for a friend for a few weeks. He has a professional tree business. Does hundreds and hundreds of cords a year. I couldn't get it all in one pic. This is maybe half of it. I was on top of his log truck. His guy rolls up with this thing in the grapple I forget the diameter, but the saw is a 372 with a 24" bar. I think it was about 50"-52"
