Tree of the Year 2024: Weeping Beech
As we begin to grasp the reality of being halfway through the 2020s, it is important to reflect on another eventful year now captured in the vault of time.
Trees can serve as helpful reminders of the many happenings in one’s life. They make up the most basic framework of our memories, even if only subconsciously, helping to create the mental images of our most precious recollections. This is because they’re in a constant state of orderly change that closely aligns itself with points in time. This change is sometimes welcomed, sometimes dreaded, but always memorable and omnipresent in the background of our day to day lives.
Scanning through 2024’s photos, and digging into my own recollections of the many great trees in Newport that showed off in 2024, one tree in particular evokes the most powerful images from the day I went to visit it. The weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’) at Kingscote, along Bowery Street, is the 2024 selection for the prestigious tree of the year honors. This tree is responsible for launching my personal obsession with the many outstanding weeping beech trees growing in Newport, which hopefully will lead to something valuable that the tree loving public can benefit from. So far, this obsession has only given me joy.
The Kingscote weeping beech is by no means the oldest and most impressive weeping beech in Newport, but all weeping beech are unique, and sometimes the younger trees possess the most character. A mature specimen, the Kingscote weeper, one of two on the property, is one of the more publicly visible weepers in town, sited in a prominent location with lots of activity between Aquidneck Park, Bellevue Avenue, and the two nearby shopping plazas. Judging by the engravings on the trunk, many people have spent time with the tree over the years, drawn in from a far by its beauty, and once up close, brought underneath its twisting branches by curiosity. I would argue weeping beech is one of the few deciduous trees more attractive without leaves, flowers, and fruit than with, because the mystifying branching network can be observed in its entirety. Nature is an exceptional artist.
My first visit to the weeper at Kingscote was on the morning of November 16th, when it was first starting to show fall color. Once within the protection of its pendulous limbs, I couldn’t help but spend some time relaxing and letting my thoughts run, craning my neck to behold the incredible organism before me. I walked out from underneath the tree that day with a smile on my face, content with the free therapy I had received standing alongside such a special tree. Perhaps a morning ritual of meditating within the canopy a weeping beech was in order. Most people understand the many benefits trees provide to us, but I’m confident the presence of trees does more for humanity than we may ever truly understand.
That is what I will remember about the Kingscote weeping beech, the 2024 Tree of the Year.
