Big Freaking Beech Tree

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mayhem

mayhem

Minister of Fire
May 8, 2007
1,956
Saugerties, NY
Grew up in this house, now it belongs to my brother. I was always fascinated by this tree, simply because its so darn huge. Last ngiht I decided to do some rudimentary measurements to see just how big.

Copper Beech tree, 160" circumference at chest height, makes for about 50" diameter give or take. The canopy extends out in a roughly 45 foot radius from the trunk in all directions. The house is about 35 feet tall give or take and the tree towers over it...my best guess is the tree is somehwere in the 65-70 foot range. Considering how dense Beech is and the age of the house (constructed in 1891 IIRC), this thng has got to be well over 100 years old, possibly considerably older than that.

Lousy cell phone pics are the best I can do.

Damn big tree. Couple years worth of wood there.
 

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A beauty! I love Beech for many reasons & that one is awesome.
 
Beach trees really are beautiful but they do have an annoying habit of dropping massive branches with no warning or provocation. My parents have had a beech tree drop two large (2 ft diameter!) branches on to the roof of their shed in the space of two years. Both in still weather, no wind.

The advice on my recent survival course was never to camp near them.
 
Very pretty tree . . . and impressive.
 
Never been more than twigs falling out of this tree as long as I've been alive. We've trimmed the bottoem few tires of branches off because it was just too close to the ground, but thats about it.
 
The beech trees here shed a branch or two now and then, too.
Course they're all in or at the edge of the woods and have competition .

I have one hill that's almost all beech ( a few oaks, no pine) and they're as tall as that but the biggest one is not quite half the diameter of that one and actually it's damaged and half of it is gone.
A road was cut /widened three years ago and the old ones near the edge all died.
The wood is like styrofoam. Dead standing a bit too long. I was hoping to haul a few cord of dead wood out , but it is too far gone. Snooze and lose.
 
That's one big son-of-a-Beech!
 
We too had one huge beech on our place and it was a sad day when it came down. Sadly though, beech is well noted for rotting from the inside out and that is what ours did. We salvaged what we could but some of it is still laying back in the woods. I was walking past it just a couple days ago. Of course with it coming down, now there are lots of young trees coming up; quite thickly too.
 
wow, beautiful tree man, thanks for sharing! its nice to see a living tree every now and then on here :) or at least one thats not about to get cut.

Beech are one of my favorite trees - so beautiful !

a couple years ago, my dad was short on wood and flagged a few trees to take down. One was a beech and I refused to cut it. Its still standing :)
 
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