Former National Champion Turkey Oak, Screven

 screven ga former national champion turkey oak photograph copyright brian brown vanishing south georgia usa 2011

Across the street from  Screven United Methodist Church is this great Turkey Oak (Quercus laevis), once the National Champion of its species. The American Forestry Association’s National Registry of Big Trees named it to the listing in 1991, stating its dimensions as: 106″ circumference, 80′ high, with a crown dimension of 55′. Sandee Strickland notes that a tornado in 2005 did damage to some of the crown; another Turkey Oak, in Florida, is the current champion. Turkey Oaks (Quercus laevis) are a staple of sandill and scrublands in the Deep South and most field guides suggest that they are rarely taller than 30′-50′, so this tree may still be the tallest extant of the species.

Advertisement

5 thoughts on “Former National Champion Turkey Oak, Screven

  1. Charlton Todd

    The church across the street is actually First Baptist, Screven. The oak sits just to the right of the old Methodist pastorium which sits just to the right of the United Methodist Church, all on the same side of School Street. Screven School (another local icon) sits at the end of School Street.

    Reply
  2. Sandee Strickland

    wE HAD A TORNADO COME THROUGH SCREVEN IN 2005 AND THIS TREE WAS DAMAGED A GOOD BIT.. IT WA SAD..MY AUNT GAYNELL BOYETTE WAS HUGE IN GETTING THIS TREE NAMED THE LARGEST TURKEY OK TREE.. AND IT WAS A GOOD BIT LARGER..

    Reply
  3. Holly

    I love champion trees. They have such personalities & this one’s no exception. I like the scraggly branches at the top.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.