Welcome

If you love gardening - or want to learn more about Canada's top hobby - join us at the Nobleton & King City Horticultural Society.

Monthly meetings are held on the fourth Monday of the month at 8 pm. at the Nobleton Community Hall (9 Old King Road, just opposite the Feed Store). They feature informative speakers, beautiful flower shows and plenty of friendly conversation. Guests are always welcome

Annual membership, which includes meetings and a show book, is $15.00 for individuals or $20.00 for two members in the same family. There is a $3.00 fee for non-members at the monthly meetings.

For information contact Virginia Turman or Barb Downey

In The News

"I think that I shall never see, A poem lovely as a tree."

Now in late fall, as I go on my daily walk along the trails in the nearby conservation bush, it's interesting and quite beautiful to see the intricate patterns the bare branches of deciduous trees make against the sky. But there is one tree that stands out and always catches my attention and curiosity as I pass by, not because of the pattern its branches make, but because its branches aren't bare at all, and yet it is classed as a deciduous (from the Latin word decidere, meaning to fall down) tree, which means it loses its leaves in fall. This surprising tree is the beautiful beech, and it's the young beeches that tenaciously hang on to their dead leaves well into winter, although the lower branches of mature beeches sometimes keep their leaves for a similar period. These tough leaves, that can be light to deep brown and often don’t even appear withered, have been more visible on the past two or three snowy mornings we've had. The prominent veining on these gently toothed leaves is much more noticeable at this time of year. By mid winter, many of these leaves will have been bleached nearly white. Beeches are often found in woods where sugar maples grow.

"A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts its leafy arms to pray."

It is something of a mystery as to why these young trees retain their leaves so long, but it's thought that certain twig/branch cells, which lengthen and cut off the leaf's hold as the hours of daylight decrease in autumn, take longer to do in this in immature beeches.

Our native beech is the only one that can spread by underground runners or suckers.

Bill Casselman, in his book Canadian Garden Words, writes that there are ten species of beeches and all are native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Of these, only one species, fagus (Latin from the Greek phagos/phagein meaning eat, referring to the trees' tiny edible nuts) grandifolia (Latin for big leaves), is native to North America. This species, sometimes called the American beech, is found mainly in eastern North America, including southern Manitoba, our area and all Southern Ontario, as well as southern Quebec and the Marit/em>imes. Oak and chestnut, which also produce edible nuts, are close relatives of the beech and all belong to the botanical fagaceae family.

Casselman also says that our word beech comes from the old English word bece, based on the old German buoh, which became buch in later German, giving us our word book, so what you say, is the connection to the tree? Well over 1,000 years ago, letters of the earliest Germanic alphabet were carved into tough, hard, long-lasting beech sticks and slabs of beech wood. These tablets, with their incised runes or letter symbols, became the first books of Germanic peoples, that include the Anglo Saxons, Danes, Norwegians and the Germans. In modern Swedish, bok is the word not only for book but also the beech tree.

According to Alan Mitchell in his book A Guide to the Trees of Canada and North America, the f.atropurpurea (Latin for purplish brown or black), natural variants of the European species, were first noted in the Zurich area of Switzerland in the late 1600s, but were thought too unsightly to bother with. But some years later, hybridizers grafted cuttings taken from them to regular European stock and soon the resulting cultivar we call the copper or purple beech was turning heads. Saplings and cuttings of this tree were soon introduced into the Americas, as well as Australia New Zealand and South Africa. A couple of fine specimens of this tree with attractive bronze-purple foliage were planted by a dear friend of mine and can still be seen on the former Jack Blyth property on the King Road in Oak Ridges. As well, I remember being much impressed by a beautiful old copper beech near the 11th century church of St. John the Baptist in the small North Lincolnshire village of Whitton in England, where my cousin lives.

There’s a wise old saying, writes American horticulturist Joseph Hudak in Trees for Every Purpose, that planting a beech is planting a memory tree for grand and greatgrandchildren, as this plant, well grown, can live for more than 200 years.

He describes the beech as a hardy, generally pest-free, sturdy tree, but cautions left to grow unpruned it can cover the ground under it with low sweeping branches and the dense leaf cover. Coupled with its fibrous surface rooting, it allows little to grow beneath, it's such a naturally growing tree.

Hudak mentions that too that beeches should never be pruned in winter or spring, as they will "bleed" heavily. He says that beeches resent transplanting and the smaller the sapling, the more likely it will survive. I've had success planting beech saplings about two feet high, first some years ago at my former Nobleton area home, and in the last three or four years here at my home near Tottenham.

Another American gardener, Stanley Schuler, in The Gardener’s Basic Book of Trees and Shrubs, writes that beeches will grow in of a wide variety of soils, so long as the ground is not constantly wet. They will tolerate some shade, but prefer to be in the full sun. He counts this venerable plant as one of the best trees to grow, but says it does require ample space to grow its best.

Beech is not an important lumber wood, and when used, it’s mostly for tool handles, some flooring, furniture and construction framing, and as a mix in plywood. Beech chips are used in the brewing of some beers. Here in Ontario, pioneers learned from the First Nations people that mattresses stuffed with dry beech leaves were more comfortable than those with straw. For many years, central European rural folk used leaves of the purple beech to make a dye.

Dried beech wood makes great fire wood; a cheery thought at this season of the year, as it splits easily and burns a long time with bright calm flames. But hopefully any beech wood used for this purpose comes from pruned branches or dead trees, not healthy noble beeches cut down unnecessarily.

"Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."

(Thanks to Alfred Joyce Kilmer and his lovely poem Trees. This young American poet, born in 1886, died at age 31 in 1918 in battle in France, a short time before the First World War ended).

Originally published in the King Township Sentinel on December 11, 2011 by John Arnott