You don’t often see a beech tree quite like this one. Standing right on the forest’s edge, it has made a very deliberate life-choice: grow where the light is, ignore where it’s not.
Look closely at the trunk and branches in the picture. The limbs on the open side reach out confidently, angled like solar panels. On the forest-facing side, it’s almost bare. That asymmetry isn’t accidental. It’s pure tree strategy.
Beeches are famously shade-intolerant. Their growth is driven by phototropism, new shoots orient towards the strongest light. Over decades at the margin, the outer side of this tree has enjoyed uninterrupted sun. The inner side, facing dense trunks and deep beech shade, hasn’t. Branches that once grew inward would have been lost to abrasion against neighbouring trees, storm rub, winter sway, or simple lack of light.
And here’s the key point: beech rarely replaces lost branches in deep shade. Once an interior limb dies off, that’s it. The tree doesn’t bother regrowing what won’t be profitable. Wood is expensive stuff; no tree wastes energy on unsuccessful real estate.
The result is this wonderfully lopsided silhouette — half-crowned, half-sculpted, almost as if the forest chiselled it by subtraction.
Walk the forest margin and you’ll see this pattern again and again. The beech is telling you, very plainly, where the light falls.