Credit: Brian Kelley
Driving up from New York City to visit his in-laws in Massachusetts, Brian Kelley took a detour through Pine Plains on Route 82. “If it’s a road less traveled,” he said, “there’s always potential to see something someone hasn’t seen before.”
Near the intersection of Route 199 and Route 82, Kelley spotted massive limbs extending from a roadside tree and immediately pulled over. Kelley, who specializes in arboreal photography, was staring at what he believes to be the largest bur oak in New York state.
Credit: Brian Kelley
“At first, I saw these huge limbs sticking out, and I just thought, Holy crap, this thing is massive,” recalled Kelley, who quickly grabbed his camera and a Nikon Forestry Pro laser measurement tool to examine his find.
The bur oak stands 81 feet tall with a circumference of 301 inches — or 25 feet — impressive for any tree, but particularly rare for this species in New York. According to Kelley, only 20 to 30 trees in the state have such a circumference. “It’s definitely one of the largest single-stem oaks in New York, and the largest known bur oak in the state,” he said, comparing it to another large oak known as the torture tree, in Leicester, N.Y.
The tree’s swollen base, likely due to its proximity to a wetland and occasional flooding, contributes to its impressive size. Using American Forests’ point system — which factors in circumference, crown spread and height — Kelley determined the tree scored 402 points, placing it among New York’s largest.
He estimates the tree is between 200 and 300 years old but notes it’s nearly impossible to determine its age without coring the trunk, which may be hollow. He’s now working with local historian Dyan Wapnick, president of the Little Nine Partners Historical Society, to uncover records of the tree’s presence in early town surveys.
Dorothy Osofsky owns the property where the oak stands. “I’ve been here a long time” she said. “This was pasture for the cows. We didn’t plant that tree; it just grew here.” From inside her house, Osofsky retrieved an undated story from the Pine Plains Register-Herald that was written from the point of view of the tree itself. “Help me, I am 200 years old,” it read. “I could live another 100 years if the vines, saplings, brush, and other growth under my limbs were cleared away. They consume my much-needed nourishment and are also blocking me from the sun.”
Credit: Brian Kelley
Camera in hand, Kelley has answered the tree’s cry for help. Kelley received permission from Osofsky to clear the brush and vines around the enormous tree, ensuring just the right light for the perfect shot. Originally from upstate near Ithaca, Kelley has spent 15 years as a commercial photographer after earning a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His career includes projects for major brands like Nike, but he’s always wanted to pursue something more meaningful.“I wanted to get out of the city and do some kind of photo work that had more meaning to it,” Kelley said. After traveling the country and seeing ancient trees — some as old as 15,000 years — he found his true calling: “Seeing big trees sent me down a rabbit hole.”
In 2016, Kelley discovered the Chicago nonprofit American Forests, whose Champion Trees program catalogs the largest trees in the U.S. While the records were impressive, the photos were lacking, so Kelley approached the organization. By 2018, he had secured funding and embarked on a two-year journey across the country to photograph and preserve the visual legacy of America’s biggest trees.
In 2020, Kelley founded the Gathering Growth Foundation, an organization dedicated to tracking and documenting large trees. Since then, in order to stay close to his family, he has focused his efforts on New York, working on a book that catalogs the state’s largest and oldest trees.
Credit: Patrick Grego
“I think about the visual preservation aspect,” Kelley said. “Growing up on the East Coast, there was no database to show that in my hometown, there used to be massive pine and oak trees. My goal is to create a record, so that one day, someone can look at this archive and be reminded of what we have and what we value.”
Kelley, who also continues to do commercial work, hopes his pictures inspire others to appreciate the importance of trees and encourages people to contact him if they think they have a giant on their property.
If you have not seen the walnut tree in Havana Glen the town of Montour Park in Montour Falls NY Schuyler county the tree is named the General Sullivan because it was standing when he came through the area in the early 1700s also there is a story of a man was hung from the tree
Pine Plains is also blessed with the largest Sycamore – some 28 feet in circumference when I measured years ago. It is located along Rt 83 about a half mile East of the Carpenter Hill Rd intersection in an open field.