southern beech
- Also called:
- false beech or silver beech
southern beech, (genus Nothofagus), genus of 35–40 species of trees and shrubs in the family Nothofagaceae, native to cooler regions of the Southern Hemisphere. Several species are grown as ornamentals or for their useful wood. The southern beeches were formerly placed in the beech and oak family (Fagaceae).
Southern beeches are found scattered throughout southern South America, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the mountains of New Guinea. The unusual distribution of the genus has frequently been cited as evidence of continental drift after the breakup of the single large continent of Gondwana during the Cretaceous Period (145.0 million–66.0 million years ago). Because the fruits of Nothofagus are highly susceptible to damage by seawater, the plants could occur where they do only by the rafting of the continents or by the unlikely event that their seeds were transported by birds across vast distances of open ocean.
The wavy-leaved Antarctic beech, or nire (Nothofagus antarctica), and the roble beech (N. obliqua), both 30-metre (98-foot) trees native to Chile and Argentina, differ from other species of southern beech in being deciduous; they are planted as ornamentals on other continents. The pink-brown hardwood of the Antarctic beech is used in flooring and cabinetmaking. The remaining southern beeches are evergreen timber trees of the Australasian area. Among the best known are the Australian beech (N. moorei), a 46-metre (151-foot) tree with leaves 7 cm (3 inches) long, found in New South Wales; the myrtle beech, Tasmanian myrtle, or Australian, or red, myrtle (N. cunninghamii), a 60-metre (197-foot) Tasmanian tree important for its fine-textured wood; the slender columnar red beech (N. fusca) of New Zealand, about 30 metres tall; and the silver, or southland, beech (N. menziesii), a 30-metre New Zealand tree with doubly and bluntly toothed leaves bearing small hairy pits beneath.
