The Beech tree's beauty lingers.

Each tree species seems to have its particular season in the sun. By December, young beech trees are conspicuous for retaining papery leaves on lower branches, surrounding and protecting their slender, pointed golden-brown buds.

Why do beech hold-onto their leaves?  Well some speculate its because both beech and oaks are continuing to adapt the required response to shed their leaves in autumn. Pollen records taken from peat bog cores show that both beech and oaks, with tropical ancestry, were among the most-recent tree species to rebound into the post-glacial New England landscape. Spruce and birch trees arrived much earlier.

Beech favors pockets of well-drained "washed till" soil, characteristic of the White Mountain foothills. But now "beech bark disease" is marring the quality of beech for timber by pock-marking those characteristic smooth gray trunks. The disease is a two-part complex of a tiny wingless insect called "woolly beech scale" that taps sap like an aphid. Then, when the bark cracks, a fungus invades. Wood-boring insects soon follow until the trunk is weak and prone to break during high winds. That's called "beech snap."

Shade-loving beech trees can sprout from their roots. Injured trees sprout new saplings in response to disease and stress. Some foresters regard pure stands of diseased, pock-marked beech trees as "beech hell."

But in late autumn - when all other trees have lost their leaves, the golden glow of yellow beech woods, illuminated by low-angle sunlight, makes these forests "beech heaven!"