Big Tree Tsitsikamma

The Big Tree is an Outeniqua yellowwood standing about thirty-six metres with a trunk circumference near nine metres, and its age is usually given as somewhere around eight hundred years - dating large yellowwoods precisely is difficult, so the figure is an estimate rather than a count. It survived the timber cutting that took most of the accessible old trees out of these forests in the nineteenth century, when yellowwood built floors, furniture and railway sleepers across the Cape. A boardwalk loop of a few hundred metres runs from the car park through the forest to it, level and easy, with interpretive signs on the forest and other named trees on a longer loop. The surrounding forest is genuine indigenous Tsitsikamma with ferns, lianas and Knysna turacos. It takes twenty minutes and sits directly off the N2, which is why almost everyone driving the Garden Route stops.

What you actually see

• The yellowwood - about 36 metres tall with a nine-metre trunk, estimated at eight centuries.
• The survivor status - a tree that escaped the nineteenth-century timber cutting.
• The boardwalk - a short level loop through indigenous forest to the base.
• The forest around it - ferns, lianas and turacos in Tsitsikamma canopy.

When to go

All year. Half an hour. Early or late avoids the coach groups.

Honest expectations

It is a short stop, not a walk, and there is a fee. Coaches arrive through the day and the boardwalk gets busy. The age figure is an estimate. Rain is frequent in this forest belt.

Nearby

Storms River Mouth is south; Bloukrans Bridge is west on the N2.