Fagus, Common Beech, European Beech Tree 'Tortuosa'

There are two phenomenal specimens of this cultivar in the Arnold Arboretum, Boston, MA Z6a.

Roughly 20' high and 35' wid...Read Moree, they're umbrella shaped overall, weeping at the edge of the crown. The muscular branches are grotesquely but picturesquely contorted into huge triangular gyres. They even self-graft in places, leaving big mysterious holes in the wood. Amazingly sculptural, both trees are asymmetrically balanced. It's hard to believe they aren't the product of skilled artistry.

They look like trees from a nineteenth-century illustration of the forest around a witch's house in a Grimm fairytale: grotesque, mysterious, and a little spooky.