Arborist Finds New NYS Champion Trees

ESPERANCE — With last week’s release of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) 2024 Big Tree Registry, Certified Arborist Fred Breglia has added four trees to the list. Two of the trees are slated to be recognized as the largest in the United States. 

Trees added to the most recent publicized list of NYS Champions include a Devil’s Walking Stick (Aralia spinosa), located at Landis Arboretum in Esperance. A supersized silver maple donning 401 big tree points discovered in the town of Tribes Hill is a new champion. Also recognized as State champions are a Kansas Hawthorn and Mountain Winterberry located in Kings County, which both have more big tree points than the current trees in the National Tree Champion Registry, documented by American Forests. The most recent National Champion Tree Registry was last updated in 2021.

Landis Arboretum Executive Director and Certified Arborist Fred Breglia has been hunting big trees for over 25 years. In 2022, Fred documented NYS’s biggest tree, a whopper of an Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), in Schaghticoke.