South Carolina Champion Trees

Twenty-six of South Carolina's biggest trees are a walk from class.

South Carolina keeps a register of the largest known tree of every species. Most counties have a handful. Inside a mile and three-quarters of Tillman Hall there are twenty-six, and fourteen of those grow in the Botanical Garden, close enough together to see in one afternoon.

263Champions statewide
13National champions
193Species represented
The map

Pick a walk, or wander.

Each dot is the biggest known tree of its species in the state. Bigger dots are bigger trees, scored the American Forests way: trunk circumference in inches, plus height in feet, plus a quarter of the crown spread. The two walks string the campus trees into routes you can do between classes.

 

National champion State champion Runner-up or documented Non-native / invasive in SC
Why so many here

Somebody planted them and nobody cut them down.

Fourteen of the twenty-six grow inside the S.C. Botanical Garden. Five more are in the campus core, including a bur oak planted for the university's centennial. The rest trail south and west toward the Madren Center and the Experimental Forest.

A Nuttall oak from the Mississippi bottoms, an Arizona cypress, a Port-Orford-cedar from the Oregon coast. Clemson's gardeners planted odd species on purpose, labeled them, and then kept the mowers and the saws off them for decades. Give any tree that much time and room and it has a shot at the register. The ones going in the ground this fall will be measured by somebody's grandkids.

Seven trees on the statewide list are species South Carolina flags as invasive: mimosa, tree-of-heaven, white mulberry, chinaberry and Chinese tallow. Two of them are on campus. The register counts size and nothing else, so they're on the map with an amber ring. If you're picking a tree to plant, walk the Garden route first and borrow from the natives.

Know a tree that looks bigger than the one on the list? Extension takes nominations through its champion tree page. Bring a tape and wrap it around the trunk four and a half feet up. Divide by 3.14 and you have the diameter (DBH).

Statewide

The biggest in the state

Score is the American Forests formula: inches around the trunk at four and a half feet, plus height in feet, plus a quarter of the average crown spread in feet.

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Biggest overall

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Tallest

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Widest trunk

SpeciesCountyScore AroundDBHHeightCrown

Top 15 by score. Richland County has more champions than any other county, 63, and most of them grow in and around the Congaree bottomlands.

Where the numbers come from
  • Source: the S.C. Champion Tree Database, kept by Clemson Extension. This page uses a copy pulled : .
  • "Campus & nearby" means within a mile and three-quarters of Tillman Hall. The trees fall into a natural group there, 26 inside 1.64 miles and then none until 3.13. That circle also catches the state-champion hophornbeam, which is 1.6 miles out but across the line in Anderson County.
  • The walks link the campus trees in the shortest order we could find. Distances are straight-line, so the real paths run a little longer.
  • Trees on private land: eight of them. We show those about a kilometre off and mark them approximate. Please don't go looking for them.
  • Botanical Garden trees are the ones that fall inside the Garden's mapped boundary. The registry itself doesn't say which trees are on campus.
  • Condition comes from the registry's own notes, which are written a lot of different ways. We group them and keep the original wording on each tree.
  • These are the registry's measurements, and some are years old. If you find one that's down or doesn't match, tell Extension. That's how the list stays current.