News Release

UMSL students discover Champion Big Tree

	Stephanie Thompson, a Pierre Laclede Honors College student at UMSL, prepares to measure the height of a shingle oak using a clinometer.

Students and faculty in the Campus Honors Environmental Research Program, an urban ecology course offered through the Pierre Laclede Honors College at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, discovered a shingle oak that is the biggest such tree in Missouri. Mark Grueber, an urban forester with the Missouri Department of Conservation came to the Daughters of Charity Cemetery on UMSL's South Campus Friday to officially measure the large tree whose branches extend overtop an adjacent mausoleum.

It takes the greatest of three combined measurements to be deemed a Missouri State Champion Big Tree: circumference of the trunk in inches, one-fourth the average crown spread in feet and height in feet. The official measurements of the shingle oak at UMSL include a 137.5-inch circumference, 81-foot average crown spread and 114-foot height. That equates to 272 points, seven more than the dethroned Champion Big Tree shingle oak based on private property in Greene County, Mo.

Most of the CHERP students had never measured a tree before. Jay Fish, program director of CHERP at UMSL, said it was merely coincidence the new state champ happened to be among the students' first.

"It was just a big, gorgeous tree that was convenient to measure," he said.

Now, it's also a champion.

Visit http://mdc.mo.gov/forest/IandE/MOChampionTrees for more information about Missouri State Champion Big Trees. For more photos of fall colors around UMSL, click here.

The honors college began offering CHERP courses in May. Students study urban ecology on 75 acres of land on South Campus and in adjacent Vincent Park, Mo. They have so far identified 35 species of birds that inhabit the area, as well as numerous additional wildlife, insects and trees. The students currently are in the process of collecting enough male crayfish for the MDC to possibly make a positive I.D. for two species discovered in a portion of Engelholm Creek running through the study area. Course instructors say it could be the first official record of crayfish populations in St. Louis County.

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