Below, you’ll see the Camperdown elm in the Brooklin Cemetery yesterday, bereft of her 2025 leaves. This uncommon Scottish cultivar must be well over 100 years old, but apparently there is no reliable record of how old she is or when she was planted there.
There is a clue, however: The elm principally shelters the grave of Rodney S. Blake, who went down with the side-wheeling passenger steamer “Portland” and everyone onboard in a huge November gale off Maine in 1892. The late 1800s and early 1900s reportedly were popular times for these articulated elms to be cultivated and planted in the U.S.
On the other hand, the uncommon weeping beech tree several miles away at Amen Farm still wore her leaves yesterday, although they were browning:
This pendulous specimen apparently is more than 70 years old, according to local sources. Weeping beeches were selectively bred from various beeches in England in 1836 and were introduced into the United States in 1847, according to the literature.
Beeches usually don’t lose all of their leaves in the fall or winter, a saving phenomenon called “marcescence”; this beech usually doesn’t lose most of her leaves until December or January; the remaining ones drop when new growth is ready to appear in the spring. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 14, 2025.)