While walking on Prospect Hill, I noticed a stand of young trees still holding onto dried and curling, pinkish-tan, papery leaves. The wind blowing through them was audible, which Harvard’s tree warden, JC Ferguson, described as a “haunting, singing sound.”
Beech leaves turn from green to gold to light tan as the seasons progress. They also hold on to their leaves throughout winter. When walking through a grove of beech trees in fall or winter, it often feels like someone just turned the lights on. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Beech leaves are 2 to 5 inches long, oblong to lance-shaped, and finely serrated. (Photo courtesy Jane Shelby Richardson, Duke University)
What were these young saplings? The oval, tooth-edged leaves with a central vein and ending in a point were my only identifying clues until local naturalist Wendy Sisson pointed out that the spindle-shaped, brown-magenta buds were those of the American beech. But the most recognizable and admired feature of beech trees is their uniquely smooth, gray bark. Where were the mature beech trees from whose roots these saplings grew?
I didn’t see any nearby, so a companion and I set out to look for beech trees at Wachusett Mountain State Reservation. At about a quarter of a mile up the West Road from the parking area off West Princeton Road, we started seeing stands of American beech saplings with their fluttering leaves, hopefully signaling that older beech trees might be nearby.
As we walked along the road, we noticed that only a small number of the smooth-barked trees had large diameters, and a few of those trees looked like they had developed multiple trunks from the stump of a tree that had been cut down. The thin bark on most of the trees was cracked and mottled with dark spots and a black, mossy-looking growth. Some had white spots. If it weren’t for the stands of saplings, I wouldn’t have suspected that I was looking at the bark of beech trees. Their branching had lost the tall, pyramidal shape characteristic of American beeches. The young trees, growing in thickets, had thin, pole-like trunks. And they were overshadowed by a canopy dominated by other species of trees, especially their relatives, the oaks, whose acorns are all the more important as food for wildlife since the beech nuts are growing scarcer.
My inquiries to Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and to Ferguson led to information that explained that the American beech is afflicted with diseases. There is hope of containing the fungal beech bark disease, which was accidentally introduced to North America by European imports in the late 1800s and which has affected New England’s beech trees since the 1940s. A fungus-carrying scale insect infects the tree when it pierces the bark to get at sap. Beech leaf disease, a new, little understood, and so far fatal threat associated with a nematode worm, reached Worcester County in 2021.
Later, I visited the Small Nature Trail behind Hildreth Elementary School and headed for the beech grove at the beginning of the trail, as indicated on the map. Amid the coming and going of people, dogs, and a bicyclist who were clearly loving this spot, a few tall, mature beeches mingled in the thicket of saplings. I recognized, almost intuitively, the gray bark that, with the sun shining on it, looked soft and pliant, like skin. On this beautiful day, I so wanted to linger before the blue-gray bark and ignore a small bit of black growth here and there and the signs of disease.
Then I, a fellow upright being, exhibiting the distinct qualities, characteristics, and susceptibilities of my own species, walked out of the forest.
For more information
- “Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England,” by Tom Wessels with Etchings and Illustrations by Brian D. Cohen, The Countryman Press. includes descriptions of ecological features of New England and a chapter on beech tree pathogens. Available at the Harvard Public Library.
- Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Harvard’s tree warden Ferguson recommended the following sites that describe, with photos, the beech tree diseases.
- www.mass.gov/guides/beech-leaf-disease-in-massachusetts
- https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/beech-bark-disease
- www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_Documents/fsbdev2_043310.pdf
To report beech leaf disease contact the Department of Conservation and Recreation forest health program director at Nicole.Keleher@mass.gov or 857-337-5173.
Margaret Kusner is a retired middle school art teacher, a lifelong artist, and a walker who considers humanity to be a part of nature.
