Virginia is home to a diverse range of trees, from forested landscapes to urban foliage and coastal marshes. It’s easy to walk right past them without too much thought.
But in Hampton Roads, there’s an eagle-eyed troop of “big tree hunters” who’ve made it their mission to find and document the state’s most impressive trees.
They’re called the “Tree Amigos,” and they mean business – with business cards and all.
Byron Carmean, Gary Williamson and Dylan Kania have unearthed dozens of champions, such as a nearly-17-foot-thick Florida maple at the Yorktown Battlefield and a sinuous mountain laurel along Mariners’ Lake in Newport News.
Their efforts have helped Virginia top the national scoreboard for champion trees.
It’s all part of a tree-dition that stretches back decades.
Scoring big trees
Virginia’s Big Tree Program started in 1970 as a partnership between the Virginia Forestry Association and the Virginia Cooperative Extension.
The group would hold a big event each year, sending people out to search for giant trees. The numbers were crunched, and champions were published in Virginia Forest Magazine.
It was intended as a youth outreach program “to get young folks excited and out into the outdoors,” said Eric Wiseman, associate professor of urban and community forestry at Virginia Tech.
The university took over in the 1990s and helped bring the effort “into the 21st century,” including launching a website and digital register, said Wiseman, who serves as state coordinator for the program.
Anyone can nominate a tree, though Wiseman said people can be surprised by what’s already been documented.
“Oftentimes, people are astounded at how small their big tree is relative to our champion,” he said. “We have some truly large and remarkable trees in Virginia.”
Champion status is given to the largest known individual of its species.
Virginia has 380 living state champions and 93 that have gone on to earn the national title, which is administered by the National Champion Tree Program at the University of Tennessee.
Officials score a tree based on three main measurements: its height, girth and crown spread, or the top section that branches out. The first two are weighted more.
“The trees that score the best are really tall and really girthy, and it helps to have some decent crown spread as well,” Wiseman said. “Many of what we might call picturesque or grand-looking trees that have the broad, sweeping crowns oftentimes will not score as well as those trees that just have the big, massive trunk and the height.”
To qualify, all trees must meet a minimum size of 13 feet tall, with a trunk circumference of at least 9.5 inches as measured at 4.5 feet above the ground.
The program accepts native, naturalized and culturally important non-native species.
Getting trees on the state register doesn’t automatically bestow any protection, but could help bring them to the attention of officials who can, Wiseman said.
Many local trees do not live long enough to reach their full size because of threats such as extreme heat, pollutants, invasive pests and land development, he said.
“If we can get people excited and enthused and curious about champion trees, then hopefully that excitement will carry over into the conservation and management. I hope they will appreciate the biological potential of the trees around them.”
Southeastern Virginia accounts for nearly half of the state’s national champs.
The region is “prime big tree-growing country,” because it has relics of old-growth forests and habitats that remained inaccessible to development or timberland, Wiseman said.
But another major factor is the dedication of the three Hampton Roads tree hunters, to whom he gave the unique moniker.
The “Tree Amigos”
Back in the 1980s, Williamson was a park ranger at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake. One day, while leading a nature hike, he used his binoculars to spy some purple finches sitting in a sumac tree.
“I told the group, ‘Wow, that’s a tall sumac,’’ he said. “And I put it in my mind: That needs to be measured.”
He called a forester for help and was connected with Carmean, then a Chesapeake science teacher, who had similarly expressed interest in a sweetleaf tree in Isle of Wight County.
Together, the two measured the sumac at Northwest River Park and it became a state champion, then a national one. The pair started exploring Chesapeake and beyond, including hiking, canoeing rivers and traversing swampland.
“Before long, we had amassed quite an assemblage of Virginia champion trees, because we were going in areas that other big tree hunters didn't go,” Williamson said.
They even unwittingly stirred up a controversy.
In 1985, Carmean and Williamson nominated an American elm they’d found in Southampton County and it quickly became the state champion.
When it gained national status, it displaced an elm in Kansas that had been a national champ for years. The state had even built a one-tree state park around it, and officials weren’t happy to be dethroned.
“This got to the point where Kansas actually sent a delegation to Southampton County, Virginia, to see this tree and make sure that we hadn't somehow fudged,” Carmean said. “But of course, we had not.”
The squabble made the front page of The New York Times and even got a mention on the Johnny Carson show, he said.
A few years later, the tree died from Dutch elm disease, an invasive fungal infection that wiped out more than 75% of American elms during the 20th century. (The current national champion is in Chesapeake, sharing co-status with an elm in Baltimore.)
Carmean and Williamson, now retired from their day jobs, have spent decades tree hunting. More recently, the duo became a trio with the addition of Kania, who works at Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
Kania said he grew up playing in the woods and climbing trees in the backyard of his Suffolk home.
“It was an old house and had a bunch of old big trees, like a big pecan, big oaks,” he said. “I was always looking up and thinking, ‘Wow, that's so awesome.’”
Those feelings of fascination stayed with him, and he kept a mental catalog of the area’s biggest trees.
Kania first connected with Carmean and Williamson nearly a decade ago but started working with them in earnest a few years ago, in his spare time.
He introduced a new element into the hunt: technology. Kania uses tools such as Google Earth, Street View and historical satellite imagery to home in on potential targets.
“Until we met Dylan, we were just kind of plodding along, but now we're going full speed,” Williamson said. “He’s making it easy for us.”
Kania typically maps out a plan using GPS locations of trees with potential. The group might visit up to 30 in a day, but many are not worth stopping to measure.
A lot of times, tree hunting is more about connecting with people. The “Tree Amigos” knock on the doors of property owners to ask permission to inspect backyard trees, and rarely get turned away.
Several national champions around the region would be easy to miss, such as a buckthorn bumelia within a thicket behind Ocean View Elementary School in Norfolk, a tough bumelia at Colonial Williamsburg and the Chesapeake elm next to an abandoned gas station on bustling George Washington Highway.
Kania uses social media to spread the word, running the Big Trees of Virginia Facebook page, which boasts almost 23,000 members.
The group hopes to raise awareness about these trees before they’re torn down, infected by pests or otherwise forgotten.
But mostly, “big tree hunting is fun,” Williamson said.
“You don't need a license. You don't need a permit. You can do it all year round,” he said. “People love big trees. When they know they have a champion tree, they're usually real thrilled about it.”
For more information about how to hunt and nominate big trees, visit Virginia Tech’s program website.
