List of superlative trees in the United Kingdom

Below is a list of superlative trees in the United Kingdom, containing the widest trees, the widest trees in history, the oldest trees and the tallest trees.

Widest

Presently, a regularly-updated database of the UK's widest trees by girth is kept by the user-run website Monumental Trees. Width is not indicative of tree volume, however. The largest oak tree, as well as the tallest, in the UK has long been believed to be the Majesty Oak in Kent, however its 12.2m girth is exceeded by multiple trees in the UK. Similarly, the Major Oak from Sherwood Forest, another huge oak tree in the UK, also does not make the list.

Historically the widest

Many of the UK's former largest trees have fallen victim to age, weather, or arson. Some of them have fallen apart into distinctly multiple trunks. This list also considers multi-stemmed trees.

Oldest

Several trees in the UK, all of them European yews, are thousands of years old, and one of them has been reported as 5000 years old or more, which would mean a tree older than Methuselah(tree) in California, the current official record holder for the oldest non-cloning tree in the world. The UK also has a great share of ancient oak trees, many of which are believed to be over a thousand years old. The oldest is King Offa's Oak from Windsor Great Park at 1300–1500 years old.

Tallest

The tallest tree in the UK is a non-native Douglas fir in Scotland with a height of 66.4 meters- significantly taller than the UK's tallest native tree- a 45 meter tall European Beech growing at the River Derwent in Derbyshire.

References

1. List of superlative trees
2. List of oldest trees
3. Culture of the United Kingdom
4. List of individual trees
5. List of best-selling albums in the United Kingdom
6. List of disasters in Great Britain and Ireland by death toll
7. List of monarchs in Britain by length of reign
8. List of the oldest buildings in the United States
9. Tree
10. Glossary of American terms not widely used in the United Kingdom
11. List of heaviest people
12. Oldest people
13. List of best-selling singles of the 1970s in the United Kingdom
14. Extremes on Earth
15. List of the oldest churches in the United States
16. List of longest-reigning monarchs
17. List of wealthiest families
18. Sequoiadendron giganteum
19. List of longest-living members of the British royal family
20. List of unusual deaths