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From monoliths to minutiae, the 840 champions on our updated National Register present a fascinating gallery of plant life at its best.

Sometime around 2000 BC, in a meadow on the gentle west slope of the Sierra Nevada, a western-juniper seed took root and started to grow. Today, after 4,000 years of stoic endurance, that same juniper is still growing and, apparently, thriving. Just a hair under 100 percent of everything we know about human history can be correlated to one or more of the annual rings in this Methuselah of champion trees. Considering its apparent good health and relative isolation, it will probably be recording history for centuries, if not millennia, to come. Other champions of extremely long-lived and well-surveyed species - like the Rocky Mountain juniper, bristlecone pine, and giant sequoia - are also probably secure in their royal status until a future time we can barely imagine. Most other champion trees will not be so lucky.

Some big trees are crowned even as they are beginning to fall apart in old age. Many others enjoy only a short reign before someone finds an even bigger specimen. A few even rise and fall before they can be recognized in the National Register of Big Trees, published every two years. Here is an update on the world of champion trees.

Out of the hundreds of nominations received since the 1994 edition of the Register, 198 contenders, representing 177 species, have made it onto the 1996 list. All but six are new champions, the exceptions being a former champion honeylocust in Virginia that was reinstated when the Michigan champion lost points due to crown damage, a former champion cat-claw acacia in New Mexico that was reinstated when the Arizona champion was reported to have been incorrectly measured, a former champion common hoptree in Michigan reinstated when the Connecticut champion was reported to have been incorrectly measured, and two former co-champion American smoketrees in Indiana and Ohio, and a former champion Pacific red elder in Oregon, all reinstated due to incorrect measurement of the 1994 champions. The total number of champions has grown by 43 to 840 while the number of species represented has increased from 681 to 704.

The new champs range from the tiny 22-point roughleaf velvetseed on Totten Key, Florida, to the towering 681-point sugar pine near Darrington, California. The velvetseed, only eight feet tall and four inches in diameter, also holds the distinction of being the smallest of our big trees. It is joined in the featherweight division by 23 other rookie monarchs that score less than 50 points. Of these mighty midgets, only the cinnamon clethra in Great Smoky Mountains National Park reaches higher than 30 feet, and only the jumping cholla of Mesa, Arizona, and the Florida elder of Marion County, Florida, have diameters exceeding eight inches.

In the heavyweight division of new champions, the sugar pine, with a 37-foot circumference and a 232-foot height, now ranks No. 8 among all champion trees (for details on this massive tree, see "Rediscovering the Super Sugar," page 21, American Forests, July/August 1994). The new Monterey-cypress champion in Pescadero County, California, isn't far behind at No. 10 with 656 points. Eleven other additions to the list have a total score of more than 400 points, including such familiar trees as the American beech, red maple, and pecan.

For 56 years AMERICAN FORESTS has inspired people across the country to be on the lookout for potential champion trees, so you might think new one would be almost impossible to find. But except in the case of extremely rare trees, there's never any certainty that the current champion of a given species is the absolute biggest - it's just the biggest nominated so far. And sometimes trees on the list fall far short of their species' true potential. The new Ozark chinkapin in Claiborne County, Mississippi, beat out the champion from Clark County, Arkansas, by 84 points with a girth over three times bigger! The 152-point champion common chokecherry in Ada, Michigan, recently fell to a 259-point tree in Owings Mills, Maryland.

The biggest margin of victory was a 144-point plastering by the new Monterey cypress. Though only six feet taller and one foot wider in the crown spread than the old champ in Brookings, Oregon, its circumference stretches the measuring tape an additional 11 1/2 feet.

The biggest jump in relative size was achieved by the new champion common juniper. The old 18-foot-tall Michigan champ is still huge for a species that is more used to being stepped over than looked up to, but the new champion, also in Michigan, is more than twice as big in all measurements.

The distribution of champion trees among the 50 states depends primarily on climate (trees grow fast in the wet Pacific Northwest, for example), endemism (many species are found only in California, Texas, or Florida), and sometimes the efforts of big-tree hunters who tend to concentrate their searches in areas close to home. The last two factors are why Florida has more than one-third (64) of the new champions. Botany professor Daniel B. Ward of the University of Florida took on the daunting task of relocating and remeasuring all 117 of Florida's 1994 national champions. In the process a number of champs were dethroned but many more were found, so Florida's total now stands at 146 - the most for any state.