Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea)
This large graceful decisuous tree is a Copper Beach a cultivated form of our native beech tree. The Beech is called the ‘Mother of the Forests’.
It normally grows to about 30m and lives for about 250years.
It has a smooth silvery grey bark and in spring the leaves open a deep puprle/green and smooth faced leaf with slightly scooped edges and a delicate fringe of short gassamer which falls of later. In the autumn the leaves turn rich coopper colours and may turn brown and stay on the tree during the winter.
The beech foligage is eaten by the caterpillars of moths, including the barred hook-tip, clay triple-lines and olive crescent. The seeds are eaten by birds, mice, voles, squirrels, deer and badgers.
The wood of beech is strong used for furniture and flooring. It is a close-grained hardwood, making it suitable for book boards that need to be both strong and relatively smooth. Thin beech-wood writing-tablets and sections of beech bark were used in early writings, and when bound together, formed a collection of pages. The Anglo-Saxon word for beech is ‘boc’, and from this comes ‘book’.
The beech demands space, light and is greedy for both shading out competition. Below ground it develops an intimate association with mycorrhizal fungi sharing sugars in return for nitrogen and scarce minerals.e side of this beautiful tree.