One man’s quest to document a nation’s arboreal heritage.
Not every National Champion tree is an exhibitionist. Awarded by the nonprofit conservation organization American Forests, the accolade goes to the biggest and most majestic specimen (or specimens) belonging to each of more than 700 tree species in the United States, based on criteria such as height, “crown spread,” and trunk girth. But for every imposing oak or towering redwood, there are just as many entrants that don’t seem to merit a second glance.
Take the National Champion Florida Boxwood, for instance. It’s slender, unprepossessing and, at 16 feet, barely taller than the whitewashed bungalow it overhangs in Monroe, Florida. “You would have no idea,” says the photographer Brian Kelley. “It could just be a tree.” But when you mention the tree’s secret, people suddenly begin to see its hidden wonder. “The instant that you tell them that it’s the largest of its species, people are like…” He adopts an excited whisper: “What!”
Kelley is a commercial photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, but this summer, he is embarking on a mission: to chronicle and archive each of these Champions. He’s bought a transit van and has begun converting it, “so I can live out of it,” he says. “I’ll just be traveling around the U.S. photographing trees for the next year.” So far, Kelley has snapped around 14—less than two percent of the estimated total. Finishing this archive in even the next decade is ambitious. “If I start right now…” He does some calculations aloud. “I have to find a tree every four and a half days for the next ten years.”
Source: The Quiet Glory of Chronicling America’s Champion Trees – Atlas Obscura
Photo: Brian Kelley
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