Beech

Beech
European Beech leaves and cupules
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Fagales Family: Fagaceae Genus: Fagus L.
Species
Fagus crenata - Japanese Beech Fagus engleriana - Chinese Beech Fagus grandifolia - American Beech Fagus hayatae - Taiwan Beech Fagus japonica - Japanese Blue Beech Fagus longipetiolata - South Chinese Beech Fagus lucida - Shining Beech Fagus mexicana - Mexican Beech or Haya Fagus orientalis - Oriental Beech Fagus sylvatica - European Beech

Beech (Fagus) is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. The leaves are entire or sparsely toothed, from 5-15 cm long and 4-10 cm broad. The flowers are small single-sex, wind-pollinated catkins, produced in spring shortly after the new leaves appear. The fruit is a small, sharply 3-angled nut 10-15 mm long, borne in pairs in soft-spined husks 1.5-2.5 cm long, known as cupules. The nuts are edible, though bitter with a high tannin content, and can be called beechmast.

The southern beeches Nothofagus previously thought closely related to beeches, are now treated in a separate family Nothofagaceae. They are found in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia and South America.

The beech blight aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator) is a common pest of beech trees. Beeches are also used as food plants by some species of Lepidoptera - see list of Lepidoptera which feed on Beeches.

American Beech

File:Fagus grandifolia foliage.jpg

American beech

The American Beech Fagus grandifolia is a species of beech 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. A related beech native to the mountains of central Mexico is sometimes treated as a subspecies of American Beech, but more often as a distinct species, Mexican Beech Fagus mexicana.

American Beech forest at Hoot Woods, Indiana; note fall color and silvery trunks

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American Beech trunk

It is a deciduous tree growing to 20-35 m tall, with smooth, silvery-gray bark. The leaves are dark green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth, 6-12 cm long (rarely 15 cm), with a short petiole. The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender (15-20 mm by 2-3 mm) with two rows of overlapping scales on the buds. 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.

The American Beech is a shade-tolerant species, favoring the shade more than other trees, commonly found in forests in the final stage of succession. Although sometimes found in pure stands, it is more often associated with Sugar Maple, 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.

Beech Bark Disease has become a major killer of Beeches in the Northeastern United States.

European beech

The European Beech or Common Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a deciduous tree belonging to the beech family Fagaceae.

The natural range extends from southern Sweden (with some isolated locations in southern Norway) to central Italy, west to France, northern Portugal, and central Spain, and east to northwest Turkey, where it intergrades with the Oriental Beech (F. orientalis), which replaces it further east. In the Balkans, it shows some hybridisation with Oriental Beech; these hybrid trees are named Fagus x taurica. In the southern part of its range around the Mediterranean, it grows only in mountain forests, at 600-1,800 m altitude. Although often regarded as native in southern England, recent evidence has shown that it did not arrive in England until about 4,000 B.C.E., or 2,000 years after the English Channel formed after the ice ages; it was almost certainly an early introduction by Stone age man, who used the nuts for food.

European Beech shoot with nut cupules

It is a large tree, capable of reaching heights of up to 48 m tall and 3m trunk diameter, though more typically 25-35 m tall and up to 1.5 m trunk diameter. It has a typical lifespan of 150 to 200 years, though sometimes up to 300 years. The appearance varies according to its habitat; in forest conditions, it tends to have a long, slender light-gray trunk with a narrow crown and erect branches, in isolation with good side light the trunk is short with a large and widely spreading crown with very long branches.

The leaves are alternate, simple, and entire or with a slightly crenate margin, 5-10 cm long and 3-7 cm broad, with 6-7 veins on each side of the leaf (7-10 veins in Fagus orientalis). When crenate, there is one point at each vein tip, never any points between the veins. The buds are long and slender, 15-30 mm long and 2-3 mm thick, but thicker (to 4-5 mm) where the buds include flower buds.

The European Beech starts to flower when it is between 30-80 years old. The flowers are small catkins which appear shortly after the leaves in spring. The seeds are small triangular nuts 15-20 mm long and 7-10 mm wide at the base; there are two nuts in each cupule, maturing in the autumn 5-6 months after pollination. Flower and seed production is particularly abundant in years following a hot, sunny and dry summer, though rarely for two years in a row. The nuts are an important food for birds, rodents and in the past also people, although they are no longer eaten by man. Slightly toxic to man if eaten in large quantities due to the tannins they contain, the nuts were nonetheless pressed to obtain an oil in 19th century England that was used for cooking and in lamps. They were also ground to make flour, which could be eaten after the tannins were leached out by soaking.

Habitat

Climate and temperatures vary, though humidity needs to be constant. Little is required of the soil so long as it is well drained. Though not demanding of its soil type, the European Beech has several significant requirements: a humid atmosphere (precipitation well distributed throughout the year and frequent fogs) and well drained soil (it can not handle excessive stagnant water). It prefers moderately fertile ground, calcified or lightly acidic, therefore it is found more often on the side of a hill than at the bottom of a clayey basin. It tolerates rigorous winter cold, but is sensitive to spring frost.

A beech forest is very dark and few species of plant are able to survive there, where the sun barely reaches the ground. Young beeches prefer some shade and may grow poorly in full sunlight. In a clear-cut forest a European Beech will germinate and then die of excessive dryness. Under oaks with sparse leaf cover it will quickly surpass them in height and, due to the beech's dense foliage, the oaks will die from lack of sunlight. Foresters may assure the oaks' survival by cutting young beeches with a billhook 10 cm off the ground, which can produce magnificent bonsai.

The root system is shallow, even superficial, with large roots spreading out in all directions. The role of the mycorrhizae in the growth of the European Beech is important. Without mycorrhizae, it often does not develop well. The mycorrhizae provide chemical protection of the roots against bacteria and enhanced uptake of mineral nutrients from the soil. The following fungi genera form mycorrhizae with European Beech: Porcini, Milk caps, Amanita, Cantharellus, and Hebeloma.

One of the most beautiful European Beech forests is found in Soigne, Belgium. It is a dominant tree species in France and constitutes about 10% of French forests.

Phenology

Spring leaf budding by the European Beech is triggered by a combination of day length and temperature. Bud break each year is from the middle of April to the beginning of May, often with remarkable precision (within a few days). It is more precise in the north of its range than the south, and at 600 m than at sea level.

The European Beech invests significantly in summer and autumn for the following spring. Conditions in summer, particularly good rainfall, determine the number of leaves included in the buds. In autumn, the tree builds the reserves that will sustain it into spring. Given good conditions, a bud can produce a shoot with up to ten or more leaves. The terminal bud emits a hormonal substance in the spring that halts the development of additional buds. This tendency, though very strong at the beginning of their existence, becomes weaker in older trees.

It is only after the budding that root growth of the year begins. The first roots to appear are very thin (with a diameter of less than 0.5 mm). Later, after a wave of above ground growth, thicker roots grow in a steady fashion.

Uses

European Beech is a very popular ornamental tree in parks and large gardens, not only in Europe, but also in North America and New Zealand. Since the early nineteenth century there have been a large number of ornamental cultivars of European Beech made by horticultural selection, often repeatedly; they include:

• Copper Beech or Purple Beech (Fagus sylvatica Purpurea Group) - leaves purple, in many selections turning deep spinach green by mid-summer. In the United States Charles Sprague Sargent noted the earliest appearance in a nurseryman's catalogue in 1820, but in 1859 "the finest Copper Beech in America... more than fifty feet high" was noted in the grounds of Thomas Ash, Esq., Throgs Neck, New York; it must have been more than forty years old at the time.
• Fern-leaf Beech (Fagus sylvatica Heterophylla Group) - leaves deeply serrated to thread-like
• Dwarf Beech (Fagus sylvatica Tortuosa Group) - distinctive twisted trunk and branches
• Weeping Beech (Fagus sylvatica Pendula Group) - branches pendulous
• Dawyck Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Dawyck') - fastigiate growth
• Golden Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Zlatia') - leaves golden in spring

The wood of the European Beech is used in the manufacture of numerous objects and implements. Its fine and short grain makes it an easy wood to work with, easy to soak, dye (except its heartwood), varnish and glue. Steaming makes the wood even easier to machine. It has an excellent finish and is resistant to compression and splitting. Milling is sometimes difficult due to cracking and it is stiff when flexed. It is particularly well suited for minor carpentry, particularly furniture. From chairs to parquetry (flooring) and staircases, the European Beech can do almost anything other than heavy structural support, so long as it is not left outdoors. Its hardness make it ideal for making wooden mallets and workbench tops. The wood of the European Beech rots easily if it is not protected by a tar based on a distillate of its own bark (as used in railway sleepers). It is better for paper pulp than many other broadleaved trees though is only sometimes used for this.

Uses

American Beech is an important tree in forestry. The wood is heavy, hard, tough and strong, and, until the advent of the modern chainsaw, during lumbering beech trees were often left uncut. As a result, many areas today still have extensive groves of old beeches that would not naturally occur. Today, the wood is harvested for uses such as flooring, containers, furniture, handles and woodenware.

It is sometimes planted as an ornamental tree, but (even within its native area) much less often than the European Beech; the latter species is faster-growing and somewhat more tolerant of difficult urban sites.

Like the European Beech bark, the American Beech bark is an attraction for vandals who carve names, dates, and other material into it. One such tree in Louisville, Kentucky, in what is now the southern part of Iroquois Park, bore the legend "D. Boone kilt a bar" and the year in the late 1700s. This carving was authenticated as early as the mid-1800s, and the tree trunk section is now in the possession of The Filson Historical Society in Louisville.

The American Beech also provides food for over numerous species of animals. Among vertebrates alone, these include ruffed grouse, wild turkeys, raccoons, red/gray foxes, white tail deer, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, pheasants, black bears, and porcupines. For lepidopteran caterpillars feeding on American Beech, see List of Lepidoptera which feed on Beeches.

Uses

The beech most commonly grown as an ornamental tree is the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica), widely cultivated in North America as well as its native Europe. The European species yields a widely used timber, an easy-to-work utility wood.

Chips of beech wood are used in the brewing of Budweiser beer to impart a taste similar to that of wood-barrel aging.

Also, beech pulp is used as the basis for manufacturing a textile fibre known as Modal.

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  European Beech leaves

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  Flowers of Fagus sylvatica

• BeechTrunk.JPG

  Base of a Beech

• Small beech.jpg

  Picture of a week old European Beech grown in a pot.

• European Beech leaf.png

  European Beech leaf

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  The leaves of the European Beech turn a deep copper-orange colour in autumn and early winter

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  19th century illustration

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  Fagus sylvatica 'Atropurpurea' (Purple European Beech)

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  Remarkable European Beech Fagus sylvatica in early spring.

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  Remarkable Copper Beech Fagus sylvatica Cv. Purpurea in early spring.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Flora of North America - Fagus grandifolia RangeMap:
• R.C. Hosie, 1969. Native Trees of Canada. Canadian Forestry Service, Ottawa.
• Fagus grandifolia images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Fagus

• Flora of China - Fagus
• Flora of North America - Fagus
• Kew Checklist - Fagus

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