Behold the Beech
We visited with friends last night, the sorts of friends with whom one has challenging factual discussion that often require the use of reference books, either to settle some contention or to illustrate some interesting if arcane bit of knowledge. Our discussion turned at one point to trees, and they produced a fascinating volume: The International Books of Trees, by Hugh Johnson (Mitchell Beazley Publishers Limited, 1973).
The name was familiar, because I have had for some years a general volume on gardening, written by the same Hugh Johnson, which I have considered a favorite from among several shelves of gardening books. He provides all the necessary information succintly and with remarkable grace and wit.
I was not disappointed by this tree book. On one page (p. 151) about the Beech family of trees, there was this paragraph, which tickled my fancy:
I am probably alone in thinking the weeping beech a monstrosity. But it comes near the bottom of my list of weeping trees; the ash and the elm both weep far more convincingly. The beech's are surely crocodile tears, or indeed — as Hillier's Manual perceptively suggests — elephant's. I quote: 'The enormous branches hang close to and perpendicular with the main stem like an elephant's trunk.' Nothing like as bad as a weeping sequoia, which looks like a boa-constrictor trying to take off. But still far from graceful.
Then, on the very same page was a picture of a remarkably distorted beech tree, with this caption:
Above The demented growth of the 'Tortuosa' beech. These rare trees occur in a line through Denamrk, Champagne, and Le Cosquer in Brittany. A radioactive meteor[*] centuries ago may have cause the malformation.
Now I will no doubt spend countless fruitless hours trying to figure out where the unusual notion of the radioactive meteorite's causing the malformation came from. I'll let you know if I find out; e-mail me if you happen to find out first.
———-
* Of course, he means meteorite and not meteor, since the former refers to those examples of the latter that actually manage to reach the Earth's surface before burning up.