USA 1

With the following pictures we show you some record trees, we have seen in Washington, most of them on the Olympic Peninsular. It's hardly to explain, what you feel, when you look up from the roots to the top of such a tree and it's so high, that it's top dissapears in the sky. Those trees are really spectacular!

Once, this was the biggest bigleaf maple tree of the world. In the heavy storms in 1969 and 1978 two of the main branches broke. Even it's now no more the biggest, it's still an imposant tree. See the small house in the background on the right. It's surprising, that they say that this tree in the historic English Camp on San Juan Island is "only" 330 years old. The bigleaf maple trees (Acer macrophyllum) have really big leaves. One leave can mesure 50 cm across. The bigleaf maple tree is confined to S.W. British Columbia including much of Vancouver Island. (mi, ma)

This Red Cedar tree is one of the three biggest Red Cedar trees in the world. It mesures 19,4 feet in diameter and it's 178 feet tall. The common name for the Western red cedar was giant arbovitae or "tree of life". It is sad to see this big tree standing alone in the ancient area of a clear cut near by the border of the Olympic National Park. It surely was surrounded by a wonderful and amazing rainforest. Olympic Peninsula, near Nolan creek (ma)

This old Red Cedar tree is a nurse log. Most of the green leaves that you can see on the picture belong to other trees that are growing up on the old, dying wood of the Red Cedar. Olympic National Park, Washington (mi)

This enormous Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) has a circumference of 707 inches and measures 191 feet in height. Quinault Lake, Olympic Peninsula in Olympic National Forest(mi)