European Beech

European beech is the aristocrat of shade trees, the one with the smooth, silver-gray bark that develops an elephant-hide texture with age, the dense canopy that casts the deepest shade of any deciduous tree in the landscape, and the marcescent foliage that holds its dried copper-brown leaves through winter. It grows to eighty feet with an oval, spreading form, and mature specimens develop a presence that dominates every landscape they occupy. Native to Europe, it has been cultivated for centuries and selected into dozens of forms: weeping ('Pendula'), purple-leaved ('Riversii', 'Purpurea'), cut-leaved ('Asplenifolia'), and columnar ('Dawyck').

In Western Washington, European beech performs well in sun to part shade with well-drained soil. It does not tolerate waterlogged clay or soil compaction over the root zone, the shallow, fibrous roots are sensitive to both. One disease and two pests are tracked, including beech scale, which can be a precursor to beech bark disease. The practical consideration is space. This is a tree that eventually needs a fifty-foot radius to develop its natural form. Plant it where it has room to become what it wants to become, the centerpiece of a large yard, a public park, an estate property. In the right site, a mature European beech is the most magnificent deciduous tree you can grow in the region. In the wrong site, it is a sixty-foot problem.