River Campus beech biggest in state

The massive American beech tree showcased in the River Campus park casts a long shadow. It is the largest of its species in the state, with a circumference of 16 feet and a height of 100 feet.

The American beech was part of a tradition for young men attending St. Vincent's Seminary, which operated between the 1843 and 1910 in Cape Girardeau.

"It's the initial tree," said Frank Nickell, director of the Regional History Center at Southeast Missouri State University. "When young seminarians came there, they had to climb up the tree and put their initials in it."

The school operated as a college until 1979 and was subsequently closed. The buildings are now part of the River Campus. The tree, with a few initials still visible among the branches, is the centerpiece of the River Campus park.

The beech is just one of a dozen trees in Cape Girardeau County that have earned state champion status.

The state's tallest sugarberry, with a circumference of nearly 18 feet, is at Lorimier Cemetery. McKendree Cemetery has two champions -- a winged elm and black hickory.

The state's largest documented shingle oak is on the on the corner of Bast and Jefferson streets in Jackson.

The biggest pignut hickory and American sycamore are growing on private property in Cape Girardeau County.

The remaining giants -- spicebush, hophornbeam, bigtooth aspen, Shumard oak, shagbark hickory and a flowering dogwood -- are on private property in Cape Girardeau.

Nickell marvels that so many big trees in the area go unnoticed by most people.

"Trees are important," he said. "They are sentinels of the past."

Donna Baldwin, an administrative staff assistant for the Missouri Department of Conservation's forestry office, compiles the annual listing, issued Aug. 2 this year. Trees are ranked for size by assigning points for three elements: trunk circumference, in inches; the height of the tree; and the spread of the tree's branches, called the crown.

To nominate a tree, visit www.mdc.mo.gov/forest/IandE/MOChampionTrees/index.htm.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127