The Widest Tree Trunks In The World
Remarkable tree trunks around the world break records for height, width, and even the number of stems that fuse into a single trunk. The tallest tree on Earth is a coast redwood, and the largest by volume is a giant sequoia, but width calls for a new champion in the tree world. In Oaxaca, Mexico, the trunk of the famous Árbol del Tule tree measures 118 feet in circumference when wrapping a line around its outer ridges, but only about 31 feet in diameter when measuring straight across its width. One remarkable South African baobab takes this quirk even further, growing as six stems that have fused together into a single, hollow ring. Even a banyan in Howrah, which covers nearly five acres, lost its original trunk back in 1925.
El Árbol del Tule, Oaxaca, Mexico
El Árbol del Tule holds the record as the widest tree, with the unique problem of having two different widths. A tape run around the Montezuma cypress in 2005 came back at 118 feet 8 inches. Convert that to a diameter, and the trunk is 37 feet 9 inches across. A three-dimensional model of the same base produced a functional diameter of 31 feet 3 inches. Nothing about the tree changed between those figures. The trunk is strongly elliptical and heavily buttressed, folding in and out in deep vertical ridges. A tape follows every fold; however, a cross-section does not, which explains the different figures. For years, people assumed that something so wide had to be several trees grown together; however, DNA testing settled it as a single individual.
General Sherman, Sequoia National Park, California
When measured near the ground, General Sherman has a circumference of 102.6 feet and a maximum width of 36.5 feet. With that said, the circumference is cut in half by the time you measure sixty feet up. At this point, the circumference has narrowed to 17.5 feet. At 180 feet, its circumference is down to 14 feet. Taper is why the biggest tree and the widest tree are not the same tree, and General Sherman is the perfect example. The largest trees by volume are giant sequoias in the western Sierra Nevada, including this one. Sherman also uniquely has a branch that is a whopping 6.8 feet thick and does not leave the trunk until 130 feet up.
The Boole Tree, Sequoia National Forest, California
The Boole Tree tells a story about how you measure a tree, not just how wide it is. Where its trunk meets the ground, it actually covers more space than its rival, the Árbol del Tule. Boole covers roughly 938 square feet there, against Tule's 769. But that is where the story gets complicated. Sequoias root into hillsides, sometimes on real slopes, and a trunk on tilted ground spreads out further at its base than its true cross-section would suggest. Measured horizontally, the way a true cross-section would be taken, Boole's footprint drops to 682 square feet. That is smaller than Tule's, so the cypress keeps its record. Numbers aside, the tree survives at all because of a choice made around 1895. Loggers cleared Converse Basin between 1892 and 1918, felling thousands of sequoias in the process. Franklin A. Boole oversaw that operation, and it is believed he spared this one tree for its size. Today, the Forest Service recognizes it as the largest tree standing on National Forest System land.
Te Matua Ngahere, Waipoua Forest, New Zealand
Unlike General Sherman, Te Matua Ngahere hardly narrows at all along its length. A kauri carries a near-cylindrical bole for its whole length, and this one runs 33 feet before the first branch appears. That length adds up to 98 feet of tree, with a girth close to 54 feet. Its neighbor Tāne Mahuta climbs to 148 feet and holds more wood overall, yet carries a slimmer trunk. Such an imposing profile earns the tree its name: Te Matua Ngahere means Father of the Forest. A road crew stumbled onto it in 1928 while building what is now State Highway 12. Because kauri roots sit so close to the surface, foot traffic damages them easily, so visitors now view the tree from a platform rather than walking up to it, protecting this incredible tree.
The Sagole Baobab, Limpopo, South Africa
The Sagole Baobab has a circumference of 32.89 feet, occupying 652 square feet. a cavity that does not decay. Besides its wide circumference, this tree has another standout feature, as determined by Radiocarbon work in 2017. The tree is not a single trunk. A closed ring of six fused stems makes it up, with two further stems leaning against them. The hollow at the center is a space that was never filled with wood. Researchers call that a false cavity. The whole tree rises 65 feet, and its oldest wood dates to between 800 and 900 years ago.
The Sunland Baobab, Limpopo, South Africa
Before coming apart in 2016 and again in 2017, the Sunland Baobab was the largest known African baobab, with a circumference of approximately 154 feet. The same radiocarbon research that mapped Sagole found a double ring here. Two separate units of fused stems closed two false cavities. The larger unit was five stems. Four toppled and died, and the fifth is already broken. The smaller unit, three fused stems, is still upright and is the older of the two at roughly 1,100 years. Nothing rotted, and nothing caught a disease, meaning it still stands strong.
The Hundred-Horse Chestnut, Sant'Alfio, Sicily
This tree has a unique place on this list, as it once had the largest girth ever historically recorded on a tree. In 1780, the Hundred-Horse Chestnut was measured at 190 feet in circumference. With that said, it stopped being one trunk long ago, and its present-day circumference is around 34 feet. Italian accounts note that the measurement included the branches along with the trunk wood itself. This does complicate the figure slightly, as a single stem of 190 feet is different than strictly measuring the trunk. Whatever the tape found in 1780, the tree today is three separate stems rising from one root system, with daylight between them. Estimates of its age have run from 2,000 to 4,000 years.
The Great Banyan, Howrah, India
Although the Great Banyan doesn't technically have a trunk, it still manages to cover close to five acres, making it more of an honorary mention. In 1925, the garden removed the central trunk because of a wood-rotting fungus. This central trunk had a girth of some 52 feet. Despite the theoretical importance of this trunk, the tree barely registered the loss. It had been dropping aerial roots from its branches for over a century, and those roots have thickened into pillars that keep it supported. The garden has counted 4,033 roots reaching the ground. Staff even once guided young roots down through bamboo channels, placing them where the branches needed help. The canopy now measures 1,600 feet in perimeter, and its tallest branch sits 80 feet up.
El Árbol del Tule is the widest by tape, and the Boole Tree is the widest by footprint. Both claims survive scrutiny because they measure different things. The trees that arrived at width by fusing, like the Sagole Baobab and the Sicilian chestnut, raise a question no tape can resolve: what counts as one tree? These wide trees are truly remarkable for their history and complexity.
