Old college campuses are among the best places to look for size-champion trees. Open-grown specimens, planted long ago and well cared for, rack up BIG numbers. Hamilton's got some of the best, rivaling any campus in the Northeast, according to Biology Professor Thomas Diggins. This past year has yielded a few new ones to go with New York's largest cucumber magnolia, Norway spruce, Kentucky coffee tree.
The huge swamp oak between Bristol and Minor Theatre is a new state champ - by a mile. It's just shy of five feet in diameter, and has a crown spread of 121 feet! The same goes for the 4 1/2 foot diameter white poplar behind the library. Diggins says its closest NY competitor isn't even in the same league. This one might also be a national champ, although rumor has it some upstarts in other states claim to have big trees as well. Perhaps most amazing is that Hamilton's small remnant of pre-settlement forest within Rogers' Glen holds the largest diameter forest-grown sugar maple known anywhere, at about 4' 10". Diggins reports this tree was already very old when the College was founded in 1812.
