beech

beech, (genus Fagus), genus of about 10 species of deciduous ornamental and timber trees in the family Fagaceae native to temperate and subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The pale red-brown wood is durable underwater and is valued for indoor use, tool handles, and shipping containers. The nuts provide forage for game animals, are used in fattening poultry, and yield an edible oil. For the related genus Nothofagus, see southern beech.

Physical description

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Beech trees are tall, round-headed, and wide-spreading. The thin bark is smooth and steel-gray in colour. The toothed parallel-veined leaves are shiny green and are borne alternately along the stem. Yellow-green male flowers hang from threadlike stems. The female flowers, usually in pairs on short hairy stems on the same tree, develop into prickly burs enclosing one or two three-sided sweet-flavoured nuts. Beeches grow best in sandy loam. They are slow-growing but may live 400 years or more. Propagation is usually by seed; the shallow spreading root system often sends up suckers that may grow into thickets.

Major species

The American beech (Fagus grandifolia), native to eastern North America, and the European beech (F. sylvatica), distributed throughout England and Eurasia, are the most widely known species. Both are economically important timber trees and are often planted as ornamentals in Europe and North America; they may grow as tall as 30 metres (100 feet). The narrow, coarsely saw-toothed, heavily veined, blue-green leaves of the American beech are about 13 cm (5 inches) long and turn yellow in autumn. The slightly shorter, egg-shaped, dark green leaves of the European beech turn red-brown in autumn and, in mild climates, persist through the winter. Numerous varieties of the European beech are cultivated as ornamental and shade trees, such as the copper, or purple, beech, with copper-coloured foliage; the Dawyck beech, a narrow, spirelike, glossy-leaved tree; the fernleaf, or cut-leaved, beech, with narrow, deeply lobed, fernlike leaves; the oak-leaved beech, with deeply toothed, wavy-margined, oaklike leaves; and the weeping beech, with long pendulous branches and wide-spreading horizontal limbs. Both species are susceptible to beech leaf disease, a novel fatal plant disease likely spread by nematodes.

Britannica Quiz

Trees: Giants Holding the Sky

An Asian species, the Chinese beech (F. engleriana), about 20 metres (65 feet) tall, and the Japanese blue beech (F. japonica), up to 24 metres (79 feet) tall, divide at the base into several stems. The Japanese, or Siebold’s, beech (F. crenata) is grown as an ornamental in the Western Hemisphere. The Mexican beech, or haya (F. mexicana), a timber tree often 40 metres (130 feet) tall, has wedge-shaped leaves. The Oriental beech (F. orientalis), a pyramidal Eurasian tree about 30 metres (100 feet) tall, has a grayish white trunk and wavy-margined wedge-shaped leaves up to 15 cm (6 inches) long.