This tree has been a disaster. We planted this mail-order tree, from Nearly Native Nursery, on the same day (April 2014) as the mail-order American Elm. The Beech did not grow an inch, while the Elm sky-rocketed. In the spring of 2014 the Beech put out a perfect set of lovely fragile hairy leaves. The wind promptly came and ripped most of them off - they did not re-grow. The remaining leaves became yellower and sparser throughout the summer. A repeat performance occurred in the springs of 2015 and 2016, with less new leaves each year. The American Beech must really not like the clay soil of our yard - in fact I have never seen another beech tree anywhere around this region. On July 10th 2016, most of the sparse leaves had started to become bronze colored in the sweltering heat - the end of a long drawn-out demise. On September 17th 2016, the tree had lost most of its leaves but had sprouted a few feeble pale yellow new ones (I counted 13 of them) - still clinging to life, barely.
On November 18th 2016, I finally decided to pull up this tree after 3 summers of diminishing leaf production and no increase in height or girth. Inspection of the roots showed that they had been circling around, unable to penetrate the wall of the clay around them.