Noted: The Queen isn’t the only old oak the Meyers have on their property. The farm is home to a dozen oaks that are at least 200 years old, Tizza said. In 1988 a group from the University of Wisconsin collected bore samples from 12 trees on the farm. They were studying weather changes in old trees, Tizza said, and ended up finding the champion tree and other centuries-old oaks in the process.
But many oaks did not survive European settlement and subsequent development and fire suppression, and Tizza said because Wisconsin was logged, big trees like the Queen are rare in the state.
Take, for example, the 300-year-old bur oak on the UW-Madison campus known as the President’s Tree that was taken down in 2015.