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Botanical Name: Fagus sylvatica 'Pendula'
Common Name: European Weeping Beech
Origin: Central Europe
Locations: CNW, KN
Notable Feature: Sweeping, pendulous branches may reach the ground and start new roots and the intertwining branches provide winter interest. It is a spectacular tree that needs room to be fully appreciated. Weeping beeches may live for 150 to 200 years.
Habit: A beautiful, weeping form of the deciduous European beech, growing into a wide mass of pendulous foliage, 30 to 50 feet tall with a 30- to 50-foot spread. Branches normally grow up, sag to the horizontal, and then sweep toward the ground in a graceful fashion. Bark is very smooth, thin, and grey.
Flower: Monoecious, male and female flowers appear separately on the same tree in spring with the emerging leaves. Male flowers appear in rounded heads hanging from a slender stalk and female flowers are borne in shorter spikes.
Fruit: Borne singly, beechnuts sit in a thin, spiny husk and are almost an inch in diameter. The spiny husk encloses 4 nuts.
Foliage: Ovate to elliptical, the leaves are alternate, 2 to 4” long, and unlobed with toothed or wavy margins. Shiny green becoming copper-toned in the fall.
Interesting Fact: Historians claim that the first written European literature was inscribed on beech bark in Sanskrit and the English word “book" comes from the Anglo-Saxon "boc", a derivative for the Anglo-Saxon "beece" or beech.