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American Beech

Fagus grandifolia

Summary 5

Fagus grandifolia (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 species name grandifolia comes from grandis "large" and folium "leaf".

At the Garden 6

American beech can be found in the Thain Family Forest, with a few examples near the north end of the Spicebush Trail. European beech cultivars can be found throughout the garden.

Uses 7

It is sometimes planted as an ornamental tree, but even within its native area, it is planted much less often than the European beech. Although American beech can handle hotter climates, its European variant is faster-growing and more pollution-tolerant, in addition to being easier to propagate.

American beech can take up to 40 years to begin producing seeds. Large crops are produced by 60 years and the tree's total lifespan may be up to 300 years. The fruit is a triangle-shaped shell containing 2-3 nuts inside, but many of them do not fill in, especially on solitary trees. Beech nuts are edible to humans, although too small to be commercially valuable.

The mast (crop of nuts) from American beech provides food for numerous species of animals. Among vertebrates alone, these include ruffed grouse, wild turkeys, raccoons, red/gray foxes, white-tailed deer, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, pheasants, black bears, porcupines, and humans. For lepidopterancaterpillars feeding on American beech, see list of Lepidoptera that feed on beeches. Beech nuts were one of the primary foods of the now-extinct passenger pigeon; the clearing of beech and oak forests are pointed to as one of the major factors that may have contributed to the bird's extinction.

Description 7

It is a deciduoustree 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 (2.4–4.7 in) long (rarely 15 centimetres (5.9 in)), with a short petiole. The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender (15–20 mm (0.59–0.79 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, 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.

Disease 7

Beech bark disease has become a major killer of beech trees in the Northeastern United States. This disease occurs when the beech scale insect, Cryptococcus fagisuga, attacks the bark, creating a wound that is then infected by one of two different species of fungi in the genus Nectria. This causes a canker to develop and the tree is eventually killed.

Beech blight aphids colonize branches of the tree, but without serious harm to otherwise healthy trees. Below these colonies, deposits of sooty mold develop caused by the fungus Scorias spongiosa growing saprophytically on the honeydew the insects exude. This is also harmless to the trees.

Sources and Credits

  1. (c) copepodo, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by copepodo, http://www.flickr.com/photos/63661371@N00/2925868680
  2. (c) Plant Image Library, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/138014579@N08/23998747064/
  3. (c) Kerry Woods, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), https://www.flickr.com/photos/93854456@N03/10802718515/
  4. (c) Bruce Kirchoff, some rights reserved (CC BY), https://www.flickr.com/photos/brucekirchoff/22367886283/
  5. (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_grandifolia
  6. (c) bkmertz, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA)
  7. Adapted by bkmertz from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_grandifolia

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