American beech (Fagus grandifolia)

Description

Fagus grandifolia, the American beech or North American beech, is the species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast Canada. The genus name Fagus is Latin for "beech", and the specific epithet grandifolia comes from grandis "large" and folium "leaf". The American beech is native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia west to southern Ontario in southeastern Canada, west to Wisconsin and south to eastern Texas and northern Florida in the United States. Trees in the southern half of the range are sometimes distinguished as a variety, F. grandifolia var. caroliniana, but this is not considered distinct in the Flora of North America. The Mexican beech (Fagus mexicana), native to the mountains of central Mexico, is closely related, and is sometimes treated as a subspecies of American beech, but more often as a distinct species. The only Fagus species found in the Western Hemisphere (assuming F. mexicana is treated as a subspecies), F. grandifolia is believed to have spanned the width of the North American continent all the way to the Pacific coast before the last ice age. It is a deciduous tree growing to 20–35 m (66–115 ft) tall, with smooth, silver-gray bark. The leaves are dark green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth that terminate each vein, 6–12 cm (2 1⁄4–4 3⁄4 in) long (rarely 15 cm, 6 in), with a short petiole. The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender (15–20 mm (5⁄8–3⁄4 in) by 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in)) with two rows of overlapping scales on the buds. Beech buds are distinctly thin and long, resembling cigars; this characteristic makes beech trees relatively easy to identify. The tree is monoecious, with flowers of both sexes on the same tree. The fruit is a small, sharply-angled nut, borne in pairs in a soft-spined, four-lobed husk. It has two means of reproduction: one is through the usual dispersal of seedlings, and the other is through root sprouts (new trees sprout from the roots in different locations). The American beech is a shade-tolerant species, favoring shade more than other trees[citation needed], commonly found in forests in the final stage of succession. Ecological succession is essentially the process of forests changing their composition through time; it is a pattern of events often observed on disturbed sites. Although sometimes found in pure stands, it is more often associated with sugar maple (forming the beech-maple climax community), yellow birch, and eastern hemlock, typically on moist well drained slopes and rich bottomlands. Near its southern limit, it often shares canopy dominance with southern magnolia. Although it has a reputation for slow growth (sometimes only 13 feet in 20 years), rich soil and ample moisture will greatly speed the process up. American beech favors a well-watered, but also well-drained spot and is intolerant of urban pollution, salt, and soil compaction. It also casts dense shade and has an extensive network of shallow, fibrous surface roots that make gardening underneath it almost impossible. Because American beech needs plenty of moisture and rich soil to thrive, it naturally occurs in bottomland forests. Early settlers often looked for beeches as a sign of a good potential place to clear the forest for farming.