I grew up in a maple/beech climax forest in Herkimer County, New York. I could walk out my door and follow trails leading into the forest behind our home, and within minutes I’d be deep in a dark forest of American beech trees (Fagus americana). I absolutely loved these trees - stately, with beautifully smooth grey bark, and beautiful leaves - one nature writer wrote that “an unearthly pale pure green clothes the tree in a misty nimbus of light”.

Sadly, since I left the northeast, American beech trees have been suffering from beech bark disease, disease that causes mortality and defects in the trees. I tried to find my old friends, the gigantic smooth-barked giants of my childhood, but they were all dead - I saw occasional stumps, but nothing else.

But it wasn’t all sad - I remember clearly planting a beech sapling in the 1970s in a clearing just behind our home in Poland, New York. A few weeks ago I visited that exact spot to see if it was still there, and was so happy to see it thriving. That’s me with my tree in the photo above.

One reason I was happy to find my old friend is that I hadn’t seen one of his kind in a long time. You’ll never see an American beech in the Bay Area - the tree can’t handle the compacted soils of our cities, and I suspect 8 months without rainfall is also tough for a tree that’s used to the rainy East Coast. All of the beech trees in urban and suburban California are European beech (Fagus sylvatica).