PlantFiles: American Beech
Fagus grandifolia

The photo of the leaf I posted is from a tree that was found growing on a friend's property. About half the tree is variegated. Recently I found a similarly variegated beech in the woods near my home. It's a younger tree and all it's leaves are variegated.

One of this species self-seeded next to a fence near the property line. Hoping that it will replace two ugly Silver Maples which were removed a year ago. Grows well, but seems to need watching to ensure it maintains a single leader in the sun.

Young Beeches are easy to spot in the winter because they tend not to lose all their leaves. They are very shade tolerant and very slow growing but can live for hundreds of years. A twenty inch in diameter tree could be 250 years old.

The initials we carved in our childhood are gone now, 20 years later. They got healed over and smoothed over and blurred, and are now gone.

One of the most beautiful trees in the forest, the striking light, slick bark stands out among other trees.

These trees can grow to be very large and are long-lived.

It produces edible fruits in the fall known as beech nuts. Deer and other wildlife love them.

The trunks are favorites of sweethearts for carving initials into them, as the carving is easy to do on the smooth surface and they are preserved indefinitely.

Leaf: Alternate, simple, elliptical to oblong-ovate, 2 1/2 to 5 1/2 inches long, pinnately-veined, 11-14 pairs of veins, with each vein ending in a sharp distinct tooth, shiny green above, very waxy and smooth, slightly paler below.

Flower: Monoecious; male flowers borne on globose heads hanging from a slender 1 inch stalk, female flowers borne on shorter spikes, appearing just after leaves in the spring.

Fruit: Nuts are irregularly triangular, shiny brown and edible, found in pairs within a woody husk covered with spines, 1/2 to 3/4 inch long, maturing in the fall.

Twig: Very slender, zigzag, light brown in color; buds are long (3/4 inch), light brown, and slender, covered with overlapping scales (best described as "cigar-shaped"), widely divergent from the stems, almost looking like long thorns.

Bark: The bark is smooth, thin, and gray in color even on the largest stems. Beech bark diseases severely deforms the smooth bark.

Form: A medium to large tree up to 100 feet tall with a rounded crown. Often found in thickets produced by root suckering. Old trees may be surrounded by a ring of young beech.