Weeping beech measure in length. Flowers appear in the spring and are inconspicuous. The beechnuts sit in a thin spiny husk and are less than 5 cm in diameter. The triangular beech nuts are popular in autumn with birds, mice and squirrels. The green leaves become copper-toned in the fall. In winter the skeleton of the silvery stem with its branches remains attractive. The purple pigment in the leaves acts like a sunscreen to protect its new leaves, which is particularly important for plants that grow at high altitudes where the sun is fierce. The tree is not native to North America
Gregg A. Mast Gregg A. Mast Gregg Alan Mast is a Reformed clergyman, scholar, and seminary president. Mast is the author of six books on Christian practice and theology, and the editor of a collection of sermons by Reformed minister and theologian Howard G. Hageman Since 2006, Mast has been the fourteenth president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary located in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the United States—one of two seminaries affiliated with the Reformed Church in America. Mast has overseen the seminary in a time of transition as it built a new, smaller, "technologically smart and environmentally green" campus on College