This is not one of my usual essays/blogs, but instead a simple photographic tribute to copper beech trees.

While staying at a retreat centre in Hampshire recently, I became fascinated by a row of copper beech trees nearby and took photos of them at different times of day and in different light. The photos below were all taken with my rather out of date smartphone as I tried to capture the ever changing magic of these great beings throughout the day.

Copper or Purple beech as it is also known, shines purple, copper, bronze, silver or green at different moments and I was entranced. The copper beech trees here are about two hundred years old.

Outside my lodgings was another similarly aged copper beech and I would sit gazing at this magnificent being for hours, feeling her changing moods. In the morning sun, the mood was light and welcoming, and then in the heat of the day she offered cool shelter and shade under her boughs; to sit at her feet then was to be at peace and complete. A wood pigeon would coo peacefully and hypnotically through the afternoon from deep within the foliage. And then towards nightfall, the beech tree started to withdraw into herself and to become sombre and meditative. 

I composed a short poem for this tree, in appreciation and gratitude.

Copper Beech

Wood pigeon coo-ing from the copper beech,

purring sound of idle summer

Bronze leaves sparkle in afternoon light

Copper beech and I gaze at each other,

then there is just copper beech