Monticello, West Front with Purple European Beeches

Scientific Name: Fagus sylvatica Atropunicea

Common Name: European Copper Beech

In 1807, Thomas Jefferson ordered "Purple Beeches" from Thomas Main's nursery in March and again in November, after the first planting failed.^[1] Jefferson directed his overseer, Edmund Bacon, to have enslaved gardener Wormley Hughes plant them in the southwest and northwest angles of the house at Monticello.^[2] One of these trees survived until the 1950s, while the other lived until the 1970s.

The original purple-leaf beech was discovered in the Hanleiter Forest of Germany before 1772, and it became the most common beech in nineteenth century gardens.^[3] The copper beech was an early offspring of this wild form with paler leaves. This tree is a pyramidal to rounded tree with large deciduous leaves that unfurl a tender, copper green gradually turning a deep purple bronze with smooth, pewter-hued bark.

- Peggy Cornett, n.d.