Michigan is home to seven of America’s largest trees. They’re known as national champions.

One stands beside a curb in Allegan County. Another towers over a home in Berrien County. Some are in the middle of forests.

“They just have an effect on us,“ Lindsay Lights, chair of ReLeaf Michigan ’s Big Tree Hunt, said of big trees. ”People start to wonder who else has been around this tree in the past. Why did this tree get left when all the others are gone? These trees are hundreds of years old. Who else sat under this tree? It connects us to history.”

The National Champion Tree Program, which began in 1940, recognizes just one tree from each species across the United States.

Michigan’s champions are spread across the Upper and Lower peninsulas and include species of oak, ash, Aspen and p

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