News Track: Iowa’s largest sycamore tree survives fire inside its trunk

A mysterious fire found inside a 350-year-old sycamore tree — believed to be the largest in Iowa — caught headlines and the attention of Iowans last year.

At the time, it was unclear how the fire started — officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources were asking the public for information and releasing few details.

It also was unclear whether the tree — which began growing more than a century before the Declaration of Independence — would survive the ordeal.

Background

The fire happened in February 2024 in Geode State Park, near the southeast Iowa town of Danville, about 90 miles southeast of Cedar Rapids.

The tree is away from camping sites and roads and across small streams, in a thickly wooded area that conceals it from most people.

"It's not easy to get to," said Ulf Konig, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources park manager. "It's not really obvious, until you get right to the tree and look up."

The American sycamore's trunk is massive at about 24 feet in circumference. That's about two feet more than the next-largest sycamore measured in Iowa, according to the state's Big Tree Program list.

It's quite possibly the largest tree in Des Moines County, which would place it high in the running for largest statewide.

Only cottonwoods have been found to have larger circumferences. (The record holder, measured in 2023 in far northern Iowa, was about 30 feet around.)

The sycamore also is a bit more than 100 feet tall. That is quite tall, but less extraordinary — the tallest eastern white pine in Iowa eclipses 150 feet.

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What really sets the sycamore apart is its massive trunk, which is hollow. Konig estimates the hollow extends about 50 feet up the trunk. It includes holes here and there where branches once protruded.

When Konig rushed to the tree on a winter afternoon last year, he saw flames and smoke shooting from those holes.

What’s happened since

The fire was reported about 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 18 by a passerby hiker.

The hollow trunk likely had crumbly, rotted wood at its base, and leaves from the fall. That might have made decent kindling for a fire that engulfed the inside.

The DNR deemed the fire suspicious initially and declined to reveal many details. The department sought help from the public to identify a culprit.

But none came.

"I don't know if somebody was walking by there and maybe threw a cigarette in there, whether they did it on purpose, or whether it was a spontaneous combustion situation," Konig said.

Here's what he knows: It took dozens of buckets of water — and help from his wife — to extinguish the flames, and perhaps a miracle to calm the leftover embers.

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Konig was working elsewhere in the park when the fire was reported. It took him about 40 minutes to get to the tree, out of which he saw flames spilling from holes 20 feet up.

It took another half hour to retrieve 5-gallon buckets, his wife Kathy and a powerful leaf blower. The ground was somewhat wet with spotty snow, but Konig didn't want to risk a wider fire if the flaming sycamore toppled onto dry sticks and leaves. They cleared an area that stretched about 100 feet in each direction from the tree.

The pair filled buckets with water from a nearby stream and poured it into the trunk. Park Ranger Drew Kuckler arrived a bit later and helped.

Konig estimated it took about 60 buckets to stop the flames. It would have been impossible for firefighters to access the area with their standard equipment, he said.

The inside of the tree still glowed red as night fell. Somehow the embers ebbed, and the tree still stands. It sprouted leaves this spring.

"Other than looking kind of charred on the inside, it seems to be about the same," Konig said. "But it's going to be in decline now. It might have five or 10 years left. The wind will get it."

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