The world’s largest pine tree was discovered in Yosemite National Park this past summer by a team that includes big tree hunters Michael Taylor, Carl Casey and Martin Crawford. While the giant sugar has been known of for years, it was only first measured, and proven to be the largest, this August. The Sugar Pine Foundation, which works to protect Tahoe’s sugar pines, shared the story.
Michael Taylor claims that he first came upon the tree during a Christmas vacation trip with his high school in 1981, walking off into the forest near the Merced Grove ranger station. Taylor returned to the forest for the Park Service in 2015 with a goal of finding large sugar pine, and he once again stumbled upon the large tree.
At the time, he did not have the proper tools to measure the tree height, so he just measured the diameter at breast height. That measurement wasn’t enough to give the tree a designation as the largest, but Taylor kept the height in mind. On August 25th, 2024, he returned with Casey and Crawford and was finally able to take proper measurements.
The diameter at breast height was measured at 8.7 feet and the height at 236 feet. Neither of those mark records, but those aren’t the only ways trees are measured. In fact, tree volume (a.k.a. the amount of wood there is inside the tree) is considered the best for the most accurate depiction of how large a tree is.
With the help of LiDAR devices, measurements of what would be dubbed the “Mossy Creek Giant” were taken and a volume was provided. The previous record, held by a ponderosa pine, was 5,450 cubic feet. The “Mossy Creek Giant” was measured at 5,761 cubic feet, the largest sugar pine and the largest pine ever measured.