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
The Poem Tree the 20-line poem into the tree over two weeks in the summer. Taking a ladder and a tent to the beech tree, Tubb carved the poem into the tree from memory, regularly forgetting to take the original copy with him. Sources vary as to whether the carving took place in 1844 or between 1844 and 1845. The poem was inspired by Tubb's fondness of the surrounding landscape, which is described in the first half of the first stanza. It has been suggested that the poem, which is also a summary of the location's history, was an example of Tubb's repressed