This is a great and timely thread, as I just did a scouting trip
and found a whole bunch of beeches in the woods near my home last
week. I have a
number of beech in my yard as understory trees, and wondered if
they would respond to bonsai treatment. It is good to see that
they will. I will be
out this week with shovel in hand to do some collecting....thanks
for the advice!

---------------------------

At least on the USA side of the Atlantic, beech are not
understory trees. In my area of the country, beech-magnolia is
one of the so-called "climax forests" -- the more or less stable
woodland that an undisturbed ecosystem might evolve to. Beech
(Fagus grandifolia) are one of the largest trees in these woods,
though Magnolia grandifolia (the same species name HAS to be a
coincidence!) often is the taller at 40M to the beech's 30M; the
beech often may have the broader trunk at a bit more than 1 M.

Beech large enough to make nice bonsai (and our beech's leaves
are so large they pretty much have to be a largish one) are very
tough to dig up successfully in my experience.

We're well past collecting season down here, for most trees, but
perhaps not the beech -- which have yet to leaf out.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Only where
people have learned to appreciate and cherish the landscape and
its living cover will they treat it with the care and respect it
should have - Paul Bigelow Sears.

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