The Weeping Beech by the Vest

The ice cream parlour it stands beside is ninety years younger than the tree. The national register still files this weeping beech under the shop's old name, next to what is now La Venezia at Vest 180 to 184, in a building that opened in 1981. The beech went in somewhere between 1890 and 1900, which puts it at roughly 126 to 136 years, and it has watched the corner rebuilt around it. A weeping beech is not a species but a cultivar of the ordinary beech, grown on a straight stem so the branches can fall from height. A century of that produces what this tree is: a hanging skirt of shoots reaching the grass, enclosing whatever is underneath. In summer that is a green room. In winter it is the frame of one, and the shape of the whole tree is finally legible. One thing is worth stating plainly. The register grades this one as a candidate rather than as fully designated, which is the category it uses for trees that qualify on paper and are still waiting on confirmation; most of the trees on this page carry the higher grade. Nothing else describes it by name, either, so the age band comes from the register alone. It stands on public ground in the green strip beside the Vest canal, free to walk up to at any hour.