Fagus sylvatica Atropunicea - European Copper Beech
Monticello, West Front with Purple European BeechesScientific 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.
References
- ^ See Main to Jefferson, March 10, 1807, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress (transcription available at Founders Online); Main to Jefferson, November 20, 1807, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress (transcription available at Founders Online). See also Betts, Garden Book, 342, 353.
- ^ Jefferson to Bacon, November 24, 1807, New York Public Library. Transcription available at Founders Online. See also Betts, Garden Book, 334, 355.
- ^ Denise Wiles Adams, Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 (Portland, OR: Timber Press, Inc., 2004), 79.