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A tree Grows in.....
....this is a send out to Porf. Wilson
By MICHAEL CREWDSON and MARGARET MITTELBACH - 11/11/00 for NYT
When we heard that the New York
City Department of Parks had
published "Great Trees of New
York City," a guide to the city's most
impressive trees, we were intrigued.
Although New York has no hulking
redwoods, we had heard for years about a
monster tree in Queens that was said to be
the biggest in all five boroughs. According
to the tree grapevine, this behemoth is a
tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) growing
in an obscure corner of Alley Pond Park, a
635-acre swath of green in northeast Queens
that stretches from Union Turnpike to Little
Neck Bay.
Yet as we flipped through the pages of the
guide, we saw that the biggest-tree title was
awarded to another tulip tree, one in Staten
Island's Clove Lakes Park. The Queens tree
was not even mentioned. This left us
wondering. Was the Queens giant a myth,
the plant version of Bigfoot? Was it a
largish tree that had been exaggerated out of
all proportion? Or was it a sleeping giant
that had been forgotten?
A series of calls to the Parks Department's
press office revealed there was no recorded
data for any "great tree" in Alley Pond Park.
So we decided to go on a fact-finding
mission. We would track down both the
Queens and Staten Island trees and measure
them, branch to branch, leaf to leaf.,br>
Tree measuring used to be a simple affair,
an exercise for teaching schoolchildren a
little geometry. You simply paced off 100
feet from the base of the tree, determined the
angle at which you stood to the treetop and
performed a little trigonometric calculation.
We immediately noticed two problems with this method. First, it assumed the tree was
growing on flat ground. Second, it assumed you were listening during high school math
class.
We concluded that bringing in experts would be absolutely necessary.
Bob Leverett, a co-founder of the Eastern Native Tree Society, is sometimes called the "guru
of Eastern ancient forests." He's the co-author of "Stalking the Forest Monarchs: A Guide to
Measuring Champion Trees," and describes himself as a "big-tree hunter." If anyone was
going to determine the exact height of these trees, he would be the one.
There was only one problem: Mr. Leverett lives in western Massachusetts, and he is reluctant
to take his car into perilous city traffic. Besides, his tree-measuring abilities are in high
demand. On the weekend we were planning our tree safari, he was already scheduled to
measure big trees in the Adirondacks with Bruce Kershner, a Buffalo-based forest ecologist.
The two men are writing a book together, "The Sierra Club Guide to the Ancient Forests of
the Northeast," due from Random House next spring. But when Mr. Kershner got wind of
what we were up to, he agreed to postpone their Adirondack plans.
Born and reared in New York City, Mr. Kershner had not only heard of the Queens giant but
had also seen it. He had also roughly measured the Staten Island tree five years ago, and he
wanted Mr. Leverett to get a crack at it.
We rendezvoused with them on a Saturday morning in Bayside, a residential neighborhood
in Queens, and caravaned together to 58th Road and East Hampton Boulevard, a quiet street
opposite fenced-in woods. This sylvan site is the reputed home of the Queens giant, a narrow
parcel of parkland amputated from the rest of Alley Pond Park by the crisscrossing of the
Long Island Expressway and the Cross Island Parkway.
When we stepped out onto the street, Mr. Leverett began to brief us on the details of tree
measuring, tossing out terms we hadn't used for a while, like hypotenuse. Oh, yes — the
long arm of a right triangle. Suddenly, Mr. Kershner stopped the math talk and said, "I just
want to point out how bizarre this is, looking for a giant tree on the edge of a busy highway
in Queens."
Both men were prepared for a hard-core trek, with hiking boots, heavy pants and packs.
Normally they do their research in the wilderness of state and national parks, searching for
pockets of ancient forest. We asked Mr. Leverett, who grew up in a small town in the
mountains of Tennessee, what he thought of it all. He considered carefully before answering.
"This is an old city with a lot of history," he said in a soft Southern accent. "There's a lot of
places for a big tree to hide out."
We wended our way down to a sidewalk alongside the Long Island Expressway and,
ignoring a sign that read "Trail Closed," went a few yards farther and found a rough trail
leading into the woodland's interior. The blare of traffic dulled slightly as we were enveloped
by green. Before walking even 10 feet down the trail, Mr. Leverett and Mr. Kershner were
identifying trees and estimating their ages. One big tulip tree, they agreed, was about 200
years old, a red oak was about 150 and a beech had to be at least 80. They knew this,
because the beech had "1920" carved into its smooth bark.
"These are big trees," Mr. Kershner said, with an edge of excitement in his voice. "This
looks like an old-growth forest."
Mr. Leverett has logged tens of thousands of miles measuring trees in the Great Smoky
Mountains, the Adirondacks and New England, and he's seen some monster flora. Yet, as
we walked deeper into this tiny patch of woods, perhaps another 100 feet along the trail, he
abruptly let out a shout. "Whooohooooo!" he yelled. "That is a large vegetable. Ohhh, this is
an old tree." Apparently, the Queens giant was for real.
Our eyes popped when we saw it. If tulips are skyscrapers among trees — the tallest species
that grows in this region — then this was the Empire State Building. It dwarfed the other
trees in the woods, and its massive arrow-straight trunk shot high into the canopy. The girth
of the trunk was so wide you would need a whole team of tree-huggers to embrace it
properly.
The only sign that anyone was aware that this tree was special was that it was enclosed by a
low, broken- down chain-link fence that offered, if nothing else, symbolic protection. We
scrambled over it, and Mr. Leverett began taking measurements. He whipped out a tape
measure, hooked it onto a furrow of the gnarled, reddish bark and slowly circled the tree,
disappearing briefly: "18.6 feet in circumference," he said, noting this down in a black
binder.
Getting the tree's height was slightly trickier. We followed him up the steep slope on which
the tree was growing and noticed that these woods were a bit of a mess. We passed a
discarded shopping cart, rusting truck springs, a smashed air- conditioner and the remains of
a long-abandoned car. And yet, the soil on the forest floor was soft and dark, the color of
coffee grounds. "It's wonderful soil," Mr. Leverett said as he climbed past a little patch of
ferns.
To measure the tree's height using trigonometry — or as Mr. Leverett likes to call it,
"twigonometry" — he had to be able to see the tiptop of the tree. When he found a vantage
point, where he could glimpse the top through the woodland's thick foliage, he stopped and
broke out the latest in high-tech tree-measuring gear.
Taking a $300 Bushnell laser range finder (most commonly used by golfers to gauge the
distance to the green), he aimed it at the highest leaf on the tree, which he called the leader,
and pressed a button. Zap. A digital readout on the range finder told him that the treetop was
126 feet away. He then looked into the eyepiece of another device, a $90 Suunto clinometer,
which established the vertical angle at which he stood to the leader. Using his equipment and
a little basic trigonometry, Mr. Leverett executed the motions of measurement in a brisk ritual
that left us awed and — voilà! — announced that the Queens giant was 133.8 feet high, the
equivalent of a 13-story building. Let's see if Staten Island could top that.
While Mr. Leverett was working on the tree's size, Mr. Kershner was working on its age.
He pointed out a hollow in the tree trunk that was big enough to sit in. Inside were an old
baseball cap and an empty Coke bottle. "Look," he said, "a leprechaun convention center."
He examined bald spots on the bark and said that those were sure signs of an aged tree.
On the ground he found a limb that had fallen from 50 feet up, and he got down in the dirt to
count its rings. "This bough alone is 200 years old," he said when he finally finished
counting. "I would say this tree is 350 to 400 years old." That meant the tree was a sapling
when New Amsterdam was being settled by the Dutch in the 1600's. "We're not just talking
about whether this is the largest tree here," he said. "We're talking about the oldest living
thing in New York City."
Now that we had taken the measure of the king of Queens, we returned to our vehicles and
headed to Staten Island for the showdown. Mr. Kershner, who happened to have grown up
there and had even written a book about it — "Secret Places of Staten Island" (Kendall/Hunt,
1998) — led the way. He let us know he was rooting for the Staten Island tree.
It was not surprising that both contenders were tulip trees. Except for white pines, which do
not grow in the city, tulip trees are the tallest and most voluminous trees in the East. They're
also fairly tough, able to survive in city parks despite air pollution and vandalism.
Historically, Native Americans and pioneers used tulip trees' long, straight trunks to make
canoes, and their fine-textured wood is still commonly used to make furniture, musical
instruments and paper products. They're called tulip trees because the shape of their leaves
and flowers resemble tulip blossoms.
Mr. Leverett is fond of tulip trees. He grew up in the mountains of Tennessee in a town
called Copper Hill. "It was my favorite tree in the Smokies," he said. "Most of those huge
Smoky Mountain tulip trees are 145 to 165 feet tall. The species is capable of living to 600
years."
The scene at Clove Lakes Park was quite different from the neglected, highway-beleaguered
woods in Queens. In northern Staten Island, just off Forest Avenue and Clove Road, this
200-acre park was well- groomed, its paved paths filled with strollers and baby carriages. At
the park's northernmost end, a green tree-studded lawn stretched away from the aptly named
Forest Avenue, and in the middle of it, about 200 feet from the street, we saw a mighty big
tree dwarfing everything around it.
When Mr. Leverett saw it, he let out a whistle. "This is going to be a horse race," he said.
None of the picnickers and other parkgoers seemed to notice that they were in the presence of
greatness. Aside from its humongous size, nothing distinguished this tree as special except
for a severed lightning-rod cable that hung ineffectually down its trunk.
According to the "Great Trees" guide, the Staten Island tree is 146 feet high. If true, it would
easily be the victor over the Queens Giant. But Mr. Leverett is an expert at busting
overblown claims.
"We're trying to bring truth into the big-tree numbers," he said. The big-tree-hunting world,
it turned out, is rife with inaccurate measurements. But no arboreal claimant can hide from
Mr. Leverett's laser range finder. For example, he and his colleagues at the Eastern Native
Tree Society discovered that a red oak in Michigan, which was listed as the state champion,
was overestimated by 90 feet. "Ninety feet, that's a whole tree," he said.
The Staten Island tree, which we dubbed the Clove Lakes colossus, was clearly younger than
its Queens rival, and it had had the benefit of little competition. Whereas the Queens giant
was losing its crown, struggling to get enough sun, the colossus was lord of the lawn,
spreading out in every direction with abandon. The only hassle it appeared to face was
children, running about on its massive buttressed trunk.
Mr. Leverett measured the circumference of the trunk. He hooked the tape to the bark and
vanished for what seemed to be a long time as he made his way around. At 20 feet, the tape
was not long enough this time, and we had to put a finger on the spot so he could measure
the remainder. It was a whopping 21.4 feet around, bigger in circumference than the Queens
tree.
Walking backward across the lawn, trying to get a bead on the tree's leader, Mr. Leverett
commented on how easy it was to measure a tree in an open field. "It's almost like shooting
fish in a barrel," he said.
He lasered the tree with his range finder and worked his mathematical magic with the
clinometer and calculator. "The height," he announced, as we waited anxiously, "is 119
feet." That's 27 feet shorter than the height advertised in the "Great Trees" guide, but, more
importantly, 12.2 feet shorter than the Queens' giant.
However, Mr. Kershner pointed out that the colossus had more limbs and a more massive
trunk. And we had to admit that the trunk was overwhelming. Mr. Leverett, who's no wood
sprite, looked like a finger puppet standing next to it.
But it was all going to come down to calculations he would make later. Height is not the
be-all and end-all when it comes to determining a tree's bigness. With more measurements
(height to the first bough, crown spread), Mr. Leverett planned to use a mathematical model
to estimate the tree's overall volume. "I have to sit down with a pencil and calculator for an
hour or so," he said. "But I can tell you it's going to be a close one."
We headed our separate ways and waited nervously for the results. The next evening we
received word via e- mail. Both trees had an estimated volume of 1,750 cubic feet and
weighed in the neighborhood of 50,000 pounds. The Queens tree was probably a bit more
voluminous, but the Staten Island tree was slightly heavier.
So what Mr. Leverett was saying was that it was a dead heat. Until further review, we had
two trees worthy of being called the New York Giant.
"At this point," wrote Mr. Leverett, "I would call them co-champions. Should you want to
take the contest further, we would need to have both trees climbed with periodic girth
measurements taken for at least the first 75 feet. Until that is done, I'm willing to call it a
draw."
And so, until some hardy spirit clambers to the top of both these behemoths, bragging rights
in this heavyweight-tree contest can be shared by both boroughs. As for the other counties,
Manhattan and the Bronx seem to be out of the running and, while trees may grow in
Brooklyn, they grow taller in Queens and Staten Island.
Finding the Trees
To reach the Queens giant, a tulip tree measuring 133.8 feet tall and 18.6 feet in
circumference, head for a section of Alley Pond Park where the Long Island Expressway and
the Cross Island Parkway intersect. At East Hampton Boulevard and the Horace Harding
Expressway (a service road of the Long Island Expressway) look for a nearby trail into the
woodlands. The tree, which is surrounded by a small fence, is a five-minute walk from the
trailhead.
The Clove Lakes colossus, a tulip tree measuring 119 feet tall and 21.4 feet in circumference,
is situated in the northernmost part of Staten Island's Clove Lakes Park near the intersection
of Forest Avenue and Clove Road.
From Forest Avenue, walk south across the park's lawn for about 200 feet to reach the giant
tree.
"Great Trees of New York City" is a 48-page guide that describes more than 100 city trees of
impressive size, age, species, form and historic association. For detailed instructions on
measuring big trees, visit the Eastern Native Tree Society's Web site
right here.