144 Hawthorn Street: Fagus sylvatica, European Copper Beech

Fagus sylvatica

The magnificent European Copper Beech is a climax forest tree of mammoth proportions, with a youthful smooth gray bark that becomes elephantine with age; with wide-spreading branches often sweeping the ground; and emergent copper foliage that deepens to crimson-purple and that glows in the sunlight. The European Copper Beech can reach 100’ in height on a densely pyramidal to oval shape whose crown canopy provides wonderful and cooling shade.

Beneath the dark copper-green colored foliage, three-winged nuts encased with prickly leaf whorls emerge in fall. As with the American Beech tree, the European Copper Beech tree develops edible beechnuts that birds and other wildlife relish.

The European Copper Beech tree has a network of sturdy silver branches reaching out from the massive trunk tempting children to climb upwards often leaving initials on the smooth bark.

The European Copper Beech lends itself to open sunny and expansive park-like sites where it has the room to grow to its full size over an average life of 150 years.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trees of New Bedford series
Fagus sylvatica – European Copper Beech

By: Joseph Ingoldsby, ASLA

· Common name: European Copper Beech or just Copper Beech

· Botanical name: Fagus sylvatica ‘Cuprea’

· Distinguishing features: The magnificent European Copper Beech is a climax forest tree of mammoth proportions, with a youthful smooth gray bark that becomes elephantine with age; with wide spreading branches often sweeping the ground; and emergent copper foliage that deepens to crimson purple and that glows in the sunlight. The European Copper Beech can reach 100’ in height on a densely pyramidal to oval shape whose crown canopy provides wonderful and cooling shade.

· Spring features: Shiny chestnut-colored apex-pointed buds unfurl tender copper-green simple 2” to 4” long elliptical deciduous leaves in April. It produces flowers with the emerging leaves. Flowers are monoecious with separate male and female flowers on the same tree.

· Summer features: In summer, its leaves deepen to a lustrous purple-red green above with a glabrous surface (smooth, hairless) beneath.

· Fall features: Beneath the dark copper-green colored foliage, three-winged nuts encased with prickly leaf whorls emerge. As with the American Beech tree, the European Copper Beech tree develops edible beechnuts that birds and other wildlife relish.

· Winter: In winter, the tree reveals its stout gray trunk and wide spreading branches.

· Crown: The European Copper Beech tree has a network of sturdy silver branches reaching out from the massive trunk tempting children to climb upwards often leaving initials on the smooth bark.

· Use: The European Copper Beech lends itself to open sunny and expansive park-like sites where it has the room to grow to its full size over an average life of 150 years. There are many handsome cultivars including ‘Asplenifolia’- fern leaf beech, ‘Fastigiata’ – columnar beech, ‘Pendula’ – weeping beech, and ‘Riversii’- Rivers purple beech. Beech wood is hard, strong, and heavy with a fine tight grain and an even texture, very light in color, and with high shock resistance making it an ideal wood for furniture making and veneers. As a smaller and younger plant, it can be pruned to any desired hedge style.

· History: The original purple-leaf beech was discovered in the Hanleiter Forest of Germany before 1772, and it became the most common beech in European nineteenth century gardens.1 The Copper beech was an early offspring of this wild form but with paler leaves.

· History in the USA: The European Copper Beech was brought to America by colonists in the mid-1700s and has remained a popular ornamental tree ever since. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson ordered two “purple beeches” from Thomas Main’s nursery for his house at Monticello; one tree survived to the 1950s and the other lived until the 1970s. 2 With a hardiness rating of Zones 4-7, European Copper Beech is not suitable for the extreme heat of southern gardens but is well suited to coastal New England. At its peak, New Bedford had many impressively landscaped estates and the Copper Beech was an important and distinguishing marker of wealth and property.

1. Denise Wiles Adams, Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 (Portland, OR: Timber Press, Inc., 2004), 79.

2. Peggy Cornett, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedi