Decades On, Trees Still Duel for Crown

In any comparison of Oregon and Washington, it’s clear that Washington has the biggest city, the most active volcano, more professional sports teams, the world’s richest man. And no one has trouble pronouncing “Washington.”

But until 1987, Oregon had the undisputed biggest Sitka spruce tree.

Then a junior Washington state forester nominated a tree on the eastern shore of Lake Quinault as a challenger for the title, and a battle for bragging rights, also known as the “Sitka Spruce Slug-Out,” was joined.

Picea sitchensis, or Sitka spruce, along with Western hemlock, dominate the Olympic National Forest in the heart of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the area between Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.

This particular Washington Sitka spruce is made up of thick buttressing roots, which, as with all Sitka spruces, grew out of and over a nursery log. It has a circumference of more than 55 feet, and towers 191 feet above the rain-forest floor.

But is it the biggest Sitka spruce in the U.S.? That it depends on whom you ask and how you measure.

American Forests, a nonprofit citizens’ group in Washington, D.C., has published its National Register of Big Trees every other year since 1940. Nominations come from the general public and from designated “big-tree coordinators,” volunteers from each state who verify measurements.

Maynard Drawson, an 81-year-old retired barber from Salem, Ore., who is a longtime “big-tree hunter,” says a Sitka spruce in a county park near Seaside, Ore., is “the most magnificent Sitka spruce in the United States.”

And indeed, highway signs there direct travelers to the “United States’ Largest Sitka Spruce Tree,” just as they do on the road to Lake Quinault.

“That tree up there in Lake Quinault, I saw it years ago ... and rejected it, never sent it into the registry,” says Drawson.

It’s true that the Oregon tree, called the Klootchy Creek Giant, is taller, at 204 feet.

However, its circumference is only 52 1/2 feet.

A point system devised by American Forests considers height, circumference and average crown spread (the greatest distance of any two points along the drip line of the tree, which is the measurement on the ground of the outermost leaves of the crown).

“Trees this size, anything over 700, 800 points, you are talking mega-trees, really an awesome sight,” said Ethan Kearns, head of the association’s big-tree program.

The largest tree in the country, Sequoia National Park’s General Sherman giant sequoia, has a score of 1,321 points. It is 274 feet tall and measures 85 feet around.

The Lake Quinault Sitka, with a score of 883 points, is No. 6.

The trees ahead of it, besides General Sherman, are three redwoods in California and a red cedar in Washington state.

The Klootchy Creek spruce’s registry score is 856.

But Drawson says the Lake Quinault tree has an unfair advantage because it is unusually wide at the spot where the circumference measurement is taken, 4 1/2 feet up from the ground.

He contends that at 4 1/2 feet, what is being measured is the girth of the nurse tree that serves as a host, not the young spruce itself.

A fair measurement can be taken only higher up, Drawson said.

“It just isn’t right. That tree up there at Lake Quinault, it doesn’t really start till 10 feet up in the air -- it grew out of the trunk of another tree. It’s all roots.

“At 4 1/2 feet you are measuring roots, and that’s not how to measure a tree,” says Drawson.

When the Lake Quinault tree was proposed for the registry in the mid-’80s, several measurements were recorded by different big-tree hunters. In the end, a delegation from both states measured the trees together, on consecutive days. Finally, American Forests declared the trees co-champions, something the group normally does only when the point spread is less than five.

“We still get letters complaining about bending the five-point rule, though, even though it’s been 17 years,” says program director Kearns. The association’s website refers to the controversy as the “Sitka Spruce Slug-Out.”

Drawson was part of the measuring delegation, as was Robert Van Pelt, now an affiliate professor of forestry at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the author of several books on big trees.

Just last month, Van Pelt and two fellow big-tree hunters measured and documented a new record tree, in Redwood National Forest -- the tallest in the world, at 374 feet, breaking a record of 370 feet that stood for 70 years.

Van Pelt first saw the Lake Quinault tree in 1985, when he was working for the Forest Service, and he nominated it for the National Register of Big Trees.

Van Pelt developed a system of measuring trees using lasers, which he says is more accurate than the conventional system.

“If you put a measuring tape around a tree and measure the circumference, you are always going to get an inflated measurement. The tape measures a perfect circle, by definition, [and] trees aren’t a perfect circle,” Van Pelt said. “Their cross-section is more like a starfish.”

He measured both spruce trees using the laser system in 1998 for a book he wrote, “Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast.” He found that both trees were smaller than the 1987 measurements showed, but “those trees are within 1% of each other in wood volume.”

Van Pelt says neither the Lake Quinault nor the Klootchy Creek Park Sitka spruce is the biggest of the kind -- according to his measurement system, a tree in the Queets Valley, 20 miles west of Lake Quinault, is larger.

The Lake Quinault and Klootchy Creek Park trees “are really No. 3 and 4 on my list,” he says. “The No. 2 Sitka spruce is one up in Canada.”

The National Register of Big Trees, however, honors only its conventional measurement system, in order to keep tree hunting and sizing accessible to members of the public who want to participate. And according to the measuring tape, the Queets Valley tree is smaller.

Meanwhile, the dispute over the official listing still simmers.

In Salem, Drawson has helped develop the Oregon Heritage Tree program, which recognizes 35 trees across the state for their historical value and uniqueness. The Klootchy Creek spruce is the largest tree in Oregon.

A sign near the Lake Quinault tree explains the controversy between the two trees, and notes that the Oregon tree is taller. But Don Morrison, who with his two brothers co-owns the Lake Quinault Rain Forest Resort Village, where the tree grows, says it’s always been just a friendly competition with Oregon.

“There’s no controversy,” he says. “Our tree is bigger.”