Record white oak saved from vines

SHARON — The largest chinkapin oak tree in Connecticut was discovered by the Sharon Land Trust (SLT) and Tom Zetterstrom, founder of Elm Watch in North Canaan, at the Land Trust’s Mary Moore Preserve. 

The tree was later verified as a chinkapin oak and officially measured by Keith Cudworth and Lukas Hyder from the White Memorial Conservation Center on Thursday, Sept. 24.

As part of an invasive species walk and talk hosted by Zetterstrom on the property, SLT monitors and board members had hiked up to the tree to learn how to use a herbicide applicator called a Buckthorn Blaster on Bittersweet vines that were strangling it. 

Once the vines were removed and the roots of the tree were treated, Zetterstrom examined the tree more closely. He thought it was a chestnut oak but, when he got a closer look at it, he began to notice characteristics that were unlike a chestnut. It had a different type of bark, as well as “saw tooth” notching on the leaves , and those leaves were more numerous and more sharply pointed than the leaves of a chestnut.

Zetterstrom researched the characteristics of those leaves in several tree databases and theorized that it might be a chinkapin; he knew that several of that type of oak can be found around here.

On Thursday, Sept. 24, the specialists from the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield came out and did leaf comparisons with a tree leaf catalogue. They were able to confirm that it is indeed a chinkapin oak. 

And they also measured it, and found it stands 92 feet tall with a circumference of 151 inches and an average spread of 101 feet.

These measurements were then sent to the Connecticut Notable Tree Registry, which crowned the tree as a Connecticut Champion, and the largest of its species in the state. 

The National Champion chinkapin oak is in Kentucky. At a height of only 76 feet, it is actually shorter than the one in Sharon. However, its circumference is 311 inches, almost double that of the Sharon tree.

In an interview with The Lakeville Journal, Zetterstrom explained that northwest Connecticut and Berkshire County represent the northernly and easterly extent of the species’ range in the country. 

He said the tree prefers “sweeter” soil and cited the abundant limestone in the soil here as the reason for the tree’s existence. 

A group of chinkapin oaks can also be found at Bartholomew’s Cobble in nearby Sheffield, Mass. Zetterstrom said the chinkapin oak grows mainly in open settings. A recently rediscovered aerial photo of the Mary Moore Preserve from 1960 confirmed that the tree began growing in the middle of an open meadow at least 100 years ago. He indicated that encroachment by the surrounding forest has somewhat choked out the tree’s sunlight and led to a suppressed growth rate in recent years.

Zetterstrom said that when the Land Trust volunteers came out to clear away the bittersweet vines, they had grown upward into the tree’s interior foliage and it was near the tipping point of having not enough foliage to support its canopy. Had the vines been allowed to grow for another decade or so, the tree might have been killed.

The chinkapin oak is not the only Connecticut Champion tree in Sharon. The state’s largest white oak tree is on the farm of Jim Krissell and Selectman Jessica Fowler, and has reached a height of 95 feet. The state champion Austrian pine and co-champion white ash are also in the town, at heights of 66 and 102 feet, respectively.