Care to Guess Where 2 of the Tallest Trees in Maine Are?
Maine is the most heavily forested state in the country.
Especially for it's size. We're covered in trees. Even in the big city of Portland, you'll find more trees than you would in just about any other urban area. But once you get out of any Maine city, in just about any direction, you can find plenty of trees. Especially tall trees. In my back woods right now, there are easily a dozen pines over 50ft tall.
They're tall enough that when the wind blows hard enough, I wonder if this is the time one of them is going to come crashing through my house. On the other hand, I stood under the tallest redwood in California some years back. That was almost 400ft tall, so the ones in my back yard don't quite hold up to that.
How tall do trees get in Maine?
These days, trees likely don't get as tall as they used to. Maine harvest tons and tons of lumber every year, and it's a global hunger that never ends, so likely we don't see the trees my grandfather did 100 years ago when he worked in lumber camps. But I bet the 50 footers you see in my back woods are still pretty common around Maine.
Maine even has a website you can go to and give a report/description in Maine's Register of Big Trees. So you can actually participate in Maine's tracking of the big lumber out there.
How big are Maine's biggest trees?
Well, we have a couple record setters here in Maine. Right now, it's popular opinion that Maine's tallest tree is in the town of Morrill. It's a white pine that stands at around 120ft tall. That's almost three times the size of the average tree behind my house. Crazy, right?
Also, it's possible that a pine is Maine's oldest tree, which is located in Sumner. It's possible that it's between 180 - 300 years old. You could only truly tell by cutting it down. But it could have begun its life 100 years before Maine was even a state.
We also have a nationally recognized tall tree...
Now, Maine does have the distinction of having the tallest chestnut tree in all of these United States, according to Maine Public. It stands at 115ft tall and is on the town of Lovell. It was discovered when biologists were doing a flyover in an area that they thought would be perfect for chestnut trees, which are quite rare in Maine.
It's been said there could be as few as a dozen chestnut trees in Maine, so to find this giant one is incredible. Apparently most of our chestnut tree population was wiped out by a disease some years back, all over the eastern U.S.
Sure, we don't have the redwood forest or anything even close, but we do have a TON of big trees in Maine. We're practically bearded in them. It's a good problem to have.