Everyone seems to love a big tree.
Just outside the Kimball-Jenkins Estate in Concord where a 300-year-old sycamore tree lives, people frequently stop take a photos with the large specimen.
The art school’s managing director Ryan Linehan has watched the parade of tree tourists over his 11 years there.
“It’s usually the dad that’s really excited about it,” Linehan said. People who regularly drive past the tree, he added, may not even notice how big it is, since you have to look pretty high up to take in its full 106-foot height, 17-foot circumference and the 119-foot spread of its branches.
“It’s freakishly large,” Linehan said.
More and more people are noticing big trees in New Hampshire, and if they’re large enough, they will be recorded in the Big Trees of New Hampshire program, run through the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension since the 1960s.
Currently, there are close to 1,000 trees in the program.
Loudon resident Bob Lyon is the county coordinator for Merrimack County and is one of about 30 volunteers across the state who go out and measure reported massive trees.
Sometimes, he said, they’re along a city street like the Kimball-Jenkins sycamore. Other times, they can be deep in the woods, or, like in the case of one yellow birch, on the top of Mount Sunapee.
“It took me quite awhile to get up there,” Lyon admitted.
Once there with at least one other volunteer, he uses a measuring tape and a clinometer – a device that measures height using trigonometry – to see if the tree is big enough to become a new county, state or even national champion for its species.
Concord boasts seven of the state champion trees, including the sycamore in front of Kimball-Jenkins and a Norway maple on the State House lawn. (New Hampshire also has seven national champion trees).
There may be more in some New Hampshire wood lot little explored by people, but they have to be nominated. Epping boat builder Kevin Martin got involved in the state’s big tree program about five years ago after he learned about several large trees along the Lamprey River and finally decided to report them after they went un-nominated for a decade.
“One was the second-largest in the state and one was the largest in the state, and I got all excited about it,” Martin said.
Martin was used to heading to the lumber yard and finding the biggest logs he could – they’re more likely to be clear of knots and good for building boats. But after getting involved with the Big Trees of New Hampshire program, he started looking at trees differently.
“(It) got me even more interested in seeing them standing,” Martin said.
Martin is now the state coordinator for the Big Trees of New Hampshire program. He recently wrote the book Big Trees of New Hampshire, which maps out 85 large trees that people can access on public lands.
Martin will be giving a presentation on his book and the cooperative extension program this Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the New Hampshire Farm and Forest Expo.
Big trees originate in different ways – in more rural areas, Martin said they are often left over from sheep farming days.
“The sheep or other farm animals would cool off under these trees,” he said.
Today, as a younger forest has grown up around the sheep-shade trees, Martin said the big, older trees provide important habitat, food and protection for wildlife.
“The wildlife will look to these trees – actually for generations,” he said. He knows of a stand of white cedars in northern New Hampshire, for instance, that have been marked by bears for years and years.
In urban areas, big trees are the ones that have survived development, and Martin said they provide resources like shade, a carbon sink, runoff control and local interest.
“People are usually real interested in keeping them around,” he said.
The sycamore tree along North Main Street in front of Kimball-Jenkins is one of the three or four of its kind left in the city – it is the survivor in what used to be a row of sycamores.
Concord arborist Ryan Rambeau said because the tree is in the right-of-way for the city, and because it is so old, he keeps a close eye on its health. They’ve trimmed deadwood from the upper branches in the past, and cables were also once used to strengthen the tree’s structure.
Because it’s so tall, he added, maintenance often has to be done by climbing the tree on rope and belay – their bucket truck goes up only 75 feet.
“We make sure it’s okay and safe for the public as well,” Rambeau said.
Most of the city’s larger trees are in cemeteries like Blossom Hill, and Rambeau said the sycamore is anomalous.
“It actually has survived all these years of pavement and sidewalk – that’s really amazing to me,” he said. And that, he added, is good reason to try to preserve the big tree as long as possible.
“It’s an example of what we should be looking for in our society,” Rambeau said.
In a time where instant gratification is usually the goal, he added, “It’s what long-term goals can provide – if you can wait with good planting, this is what you get.”
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)