Fagus sylvatica ‘Tricolor’ Beech Bonsai

In 2005 I purchased a Fagus sylvatica ‘Tricolor’ for my landscape in front of the house. Each springs as the tree leafs out I get a lot of questions as to what kind of tree is it? I of course tell them what it is and they just love the colors on the tree in early spring. Well I just had have one a Bonsai tree and I found an interesting tree at the Longment Tree Farm, so I bought it and brought it home sometime in 2010. The tree had some problems and I cut it back and then took a saw and tried to correct some reverse taper high up on the trunk. I sawed out a “V” section in a fork hoping for the best. Old wives tales said beech trees do not heel well. I knew that was not the case because my landscape beech was chopped by mother nature in a snow storm. Snapped the top half of the tree right off. The tree heeled just fine and now you would never know anything happened to it. I also removed around 3 large branches on the tree. All of the wounds are heeled over now. This tree has a very large surface root where the top of the root died. The bottom side of the root is still very much alive. This tree is partially wired and will be going down to the Denver Botanic Gardens some day soon to finish the wiring.

I also purchased another smaller Tricolor tree that I liked and I actually have not done to much cutting on this tree. I did wire this tree this spring and removed some of the longer tips on the tree.

Both trees are planted in Chuck Iker pots and they have been recently covered with mountain moss. This moss is really doing well and has at least 4-5 different types of moss mixed in with each other. All of the this moss came from the same area. It also some “Soldiers” growing through out moss, this a type of lichen. This moss is taking morning sun just fine and is really thriving rather nicely. I may have to go find some more of this moss. I finally wised up and entered the mile marker where on the highway I found them, on my cell phone. Now all I have to do is find my back to the highway and the mile marker and start looking.

My landscape tree is attached by some type of white woolly aphids, I checked the DBG trees and they had the same thing on them. They do not seem to harm my tree in any way. I have not seen them on the Bonsai trees which is fine by me. The magenta color is more intense on the leaves that get the most sunlight. I will be moving my trees into more sun now to see if the colors will deeper magenta.

A good place to buy Beech trees in the US is at Lowes and Home Depot (HD). Quite often the shippers of the trees mis-label the beech trees. I would wait to buy them until they leaf out so you can see what your getting. I was watching some HD beech trees and they leafed out. One of the trees was not a Purple Leaf beech, it was a rare type of Beech tree here in the US. I had been studying different beech types I new it immediately when I saw the leaves, very, very short internodes on this tree. I bought it immediately and took it home. Tri-colors are very expensive in my area at regular nurseries, but they are pretty cheap at the large box stores. Just bide you time waiting for a nice sized trunk on them.

Fagus sylvatica ‘Argenteo Marginata’ by Longment Tree Farm

Fagus sylvatica ‘Tricolor’ by Missouri Botanical Gardens

Tri Color Beech – Fagus Sylvatica by The Spruce

I will eventually create new pages for each tree.