NEBRASKA CITY – Whether measuring with the trusty old clinometer or a new-fangled  laser finder, champion tree coordinators agreed Wednesday about the value of Arbor Lodge State Park for champion tree enthusiasts.

Arbor Lodge claims 14 and the Nebraska Champion Tree Register lists 10 state champion trees in the relatively small space near the historic home of J. Sterling Morton. Some are now gone, others species have been stricken from the list and others have not been measured in 20 years.

 

Neal Bamesberger, who is president of the Colorado Tree Coalition, advocates for use of a laser finder to determine the height of a black walnut that is reported to have been planted in 1871 by Paul and Mark Morton.

 

The current registry claims it is 97 feet tall, but Bamesberger says his laser improves height accuracy because it can quickly average height at multiple points. He said it’s hard for a person standing 100 feet or more from a tree to tell which is the highest branch, because the branches closest usually look highest.

Bamesberger: “Some of them are accurate to within a centimeter or half a foot for sure, so you can better determine the highest point in the top of the tree.”

With Bamesberger’s laser and Nebraska Champion Tree Coordinator Justin Evertson  using his trusty clinometers, the men agree that the tree is really 92, “...err… 93 feet tall.”

With a circumference of 14.5 feet and a canopy of 110 feet, it is still a champion, like the neighboring douglas fir, red maple and chinkapin oak.

Bamesberger: “It’s a treasure trove of big trees, which some of them are Nebraska champions for sure. “

Evertson: “Arbor Lodge is a special place. The history here with J. Sterling Morton and his family, they were all tree nuts and they’ve tried every tree that could grow in Nebraska. So, in this little area we call Arbor Lodge there are probably 200 or 300 different types of trees, some of them very rare and unique to Nebraska.”

Evertson said age is an important factor for a champion tree. 

Evertson: “Every year it has to put on new cells and grow bigger in girth and get a little taller or it will start to decline and then die.”

The men marveled over a beech tree that was not on their list and lamented the loss of a giant chestnut tree recorded at over 80 feet tall.

Evertson said the biggest surprise for him was a colony of sassafras trees, a species whose western range is suppose to end long before the Nebraska border.

Evertson: “These big sassafras. Neal is going to tell us how big they are and they were way bigger than I even remembered. Who would’ve thought sassafras would be over 70 feet tall, incredible here in Nebraska.”

The voracious appetite of the recently-arriving Japanese beetles may pose a threat to the colony. The forest floor is covered inches deep in skeletized leaves.

A champion sweetgum tree was measured at 74 feet in the year 2000, but the experts Wednesday placed it at two feet higher.

Evertson said the champion tree program builds enthusiasm for trees and Bamesberger added that it gives people an indication of what trees will grow best in their region.

https://nfs.unl.edu/registry

 Justin Evertson, Nebraska champion tree coordinator