In Champion Trees of Arkansas, Linda Williams Palmer explores the state s largest trees of their species, registered with the Arkansas Forestry Commission as champions. Through her beautiful colored-pencil drawings, each magnificent tree is interpreted through the lens of season, location, history, and human connection.

Readers will get to know the cherrybark oak, rendered in fall colors, an avatar for the passing of seasons. The sugar maple, with its bare limbs and weather-beaten trunk, stands sentry over the headstones in a confederate cemetery. The 350-year-old white oak...