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A look at New York City’s tallest tree
The monster tree isn’t where you might expect
New York City has added more that 160,000 trees along sidewalks in recent years. Those trees will have a wonderful greening effect on the metropolis, but they can’t compare to an old giant. The city’s tallest and oldest tree is 134 feet, when last measured in 2005, and approximately 450 years old.
Known as the Queens Giant, the tree is located in Alley Pond Park in Queens between Douglaston and Bayside, according to Untapped Cities. But despite a sign and its height, the tree largely goes unnoticed.
”There is something to be said leaving it in a bit of obscurity,” former Parks Commission Adrian Benepe told Untapped Cities, “It’s part of the reason it has survived this long. If everyone is attracted to it, it increases the chance of something bad happening to it.”
The sign at the tree states: “It was standing tall when General George Washington passed close by in 1790 on a tour of Long Island, and it was most likely a young tree when the Dutch East India Company sent a group of Walloon families to Manhattan in 1624.” [Untapped Cities] – Christopher Cameron