Exciting news: Geauga County’s Big Tree Contest has found its winner in a 132-foot-tall, 135.6-inch-around American beech tree located within your Bessie Benner Metzenbaum Park in Chesterland!
Presented by the Geauga Soil & Water Conservation District (Geauga SWCD), this contest honored its winner during the Geauga Farm Bureau/Geauga SWCD Annual Meeting on September 27th, but you can offer your congratulations any time in person. From the parking lot, head to the Summit Trailhead to the left of the playground, cross two bridges and, as you take the trail up the hill, look left. The tree is about 100 feet off the trail, with a crown spread of 66.5 feet…wow!
“The annual Big Tree Contest by the Geauga Soil & Water Conservation District is an exciting opportunity to celebrate our Geauga trees and forests,” said Geauga Park District Executive Director John Oros. “Big trees are a testament to the conservation and protection of old growth forests. These forests play an important role in providing valuable habitat to a variety of plant and animal species that would otherwise be uncommon. Geauga Park District is proud to provide the public with access to old growth forests at many of our parks. We hope the recognition of the American Beech at Bessie Benner Metzenbaum Park will inspire landowners to appreciate their own awe-inspiring big trees and old growth forests.”
Beech-maple forests like this one were the most common Northeast Ohio forest type at the time of European settlement, said Geauga Park District Naturalist Dan Best, who entered the tree on the Park District’s behalf. Beech-maple forests represent the “climax stage” after many decades of differing tree associations succeeding each other: from meadow to thicket to young woodland to old growth forest. Since settlement times, most of Ohio’s forests were cut and cleared for agriculture in the 1800’s. Dan speculates that old growth beech and maples found in today’s mature forest stands are trees that grew back since clear-cutting in the 1800s and were left to grow through subsequent decades of selective timber harvesting.
“Given the locally rampant epidemic of beech leaf disease, the American beech was chosen by the Geauga SWCD as the species for this year’s Big Tree Contest,” Dan said. “This spotlight drew attention to both its predicament and its ecological and economic roles and wildlife benefits, as well as contributions to soil health, erosion prevention and watershed wellbeing – not to mention its overall beauty and aesthetic as a stately monarch in our local woodlands.”
At every stage of life and death, the American beech provides for wildlife, Dan added. As a living tree, it provides beech nuts for many birds and rodents; as a declining hollow tree with cavities and knotholes, it becomes a virtual “apartment building”; and even in death, its logs provide dens for mammals and dark, cool moist habitat for salamanders, shrews and many insects and invertebrates.
This year’s runner-up beech was a tree with an 120-inch circumference found in Newbury Township’s Oberland Park, entered by recently retired Geauga Park District Naturalist Judy Bradt-Barnhart.
For more big-tree sightseeing in Geauga Park District, by the way, Dan also recommends Big Creek Park (Hemlock Trail, Wildflower Trail, Beechwoods Trail), Headwaters Park (Eagle Trail and the vicinity of boat launch/Boathouse/picnic area), Beartown Lakes Reservation (Beechnut Trail), Eldon Russell Park (Duane Ferris Trail), The West Woods (Ansel’s Cave Trail) and Sunnybrook Preserve (Woodland Trail). Enjoy the journey! You can easily plan visits to all of these parks using our new website, Geauga Park District.
For more information about the Big Tree Contest, please contact Geauga SWCD at 440-834-1122 or visit Geauga Soil and Water Conservation District.
For more on Geauga Park District offerings, please call 440-286-9516 or visit Geauga Park District online via Geauga Park District, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.
Photos Courtesy of the Geauga Park District
