1. FAGUS L. Beech.
Trees, with smooth pale bark, hard close-grained wood, and elongated acute bright chestnut-brown buds, their inner scales accrescent and marking the base of the branchlets with persistent ring-like scars. Leaves convex and plicate along the veins in the bud, thick and firm, deciduous; petioles short, nearly terete, in falling leaving small elevated semioval leaf-scars, with marginal rows of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars; stipules linear-lanceolate, infolding the leaf in the bud. Flowers vernal after the unfolding of the leaves; staminate short-pedicellate, in globose many-flowered heads on long drooping bibracteolate stems at base of shoots of the year or from the axils of their lowest leaves, and composed of a subcampanulate 4—8-lobed calyx, the lobes imbricated in æstivation, ovate and rounded, and 8—16 stamens inserted on the base of and longer than the calyx, with slender filaments and oblong green anthers; pistillate in 2—4-flowered stalked clusters in the axils of upper leaves of the year, surrounded by numerous awl-shaped hairy bracts, the outer bright red, longer than the flowers, deciduous, the inner shorter and united below into a 4-lobed involucre becoming at maturity woody, ovoid, thick-walled, and covered by stout recurved prickles, inclosing or partly inclosing the usually 3 nuts, and ultimately separating into 4 valves; calyx urn-shaped, villose, divided into 4 or 5 linear-lanceolate acute lobes, its 3-angled tube adnate to the 3-celled ovary surmounted by 3 slender recurved pilose styles green and stigmatic toward the apex and longer than the involucre; ovules 2 in each cell. Nut ovoid, unequally 3-angled, acute or winged at the angles, concave and longitudinally ridged on the sides, chestnut-brown and lustrous, tipped with the remnants of the styles, marked at the base by a small triangular scar, with a thin shell covered on the inner surface with rufous tomentum. Seed dark chestnut-brown, suspended with the abortive ovules from the tip of the hairy dissepiment of the ovary pushed by the growth of the seed into one of the angles of the nut; cotyledons sweet, oily, plano-convex.
Fagus as here limited is confined to the northern hemisphere, with a single American species and seven Old World species; of these one is widely distributed through Europe, another is found in the Caucasus, and the others are confined to eastern temperate Asia. Of exotic species, the European Fagus sylvatica L., an important timber-tree, is frequently planted for ornament in the eastern states in several of its forms, especially those with purple leaves, and with pendulous branches. The wood of Fagus is hard and close-grained. The sweet seeds are a favorite food of swine, and yield a valuable oil.
Fagus is the classical name of the Beech-tree.
1. [Fagus grandifolia] Ehrh. Beech.
Fagus americana Sweet.
Leaves remote at the ends of the branches and clustered on short lateral branchlets, oblong-ovate, acuminate with a long slender point, coarsely serrate with spreading or incurved triangular teeth except at the gradually narrowed generally cuneate base, when they unfold pale green and clothed on the lower surface and margins with long pale lustrous silky hairs, at maturity dull dark bluish green above, light yellow-green, very lustrous, and glabrous or rarely pilose below (f. pubescens Fern. & Rehd.) with tufts of long pale hairs in the axils of the veins, 2½′—5′ long, 1′—3′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib covered above with short pale hairs, and slender primary veins running obliquely to the points of the teeth; turning bright clear yellow in the autumn; very rarely deeply laciniate; petioles hairy, ¼′—½′ length; stipules ovate-lanceolate on the lower leaves, strap-shaped to linear-lanceolate on the upper, brown or often red below the middle, membranaceous, lustrous, 1′—1½′ long. Flowers opening when the leaves are about one third grown; staminate in globose heads 1′ in diameter, on slender hairy peduncles about 2′ long; pistillate in usually 2-flowered clusters, on short clavate hoary peduncles ½′—¾′ long. Fruit: involucres ½′—¾′ in length often shorter than the nuts, on stout hairy club-shaped peduncles ¼′—¾′ long, fully grown at midsummer, and then puberulous, dark orange-green, and covered by long slender recurved prickles red above the middle, becoming at maturity in the autumn light brown and tomentose, with crowded much recurved pubescent prickles, persistent on the branch after opening late into the winter; nut about ¾′ long.
A tree, usually 70°—80° but exceptionally 120° high, sending up from the roots numerous small stems sometimes extending into broad thickets round the parent tree, in the forest with a long comparatively slender stem free of branches for more than half its length, and short branches forming a narrow head, in open situations short-stemmed, with a trunk often 3°—4° in diameter, and numerous limbs spreading gradually and forming a broad compact round-topped head of slender slightly drooping branches clothed with short leafy laterals, and branchlets pale green and coated with long soft caducous hairs when they first appear, olive-green or orange-colored during their first summer, and conspicuously marked by oblong bright orange lenticels, gradually growing red, bright reddish brown during their first winter, darker brown in their second season and ultimately ashy gray. Winter-buds puberulous, especially toward the apex, ¾′ to nearly 1′ long, about ⅛′ broad, the inner scales hirsute on the inner surface and along the margins and when fully grown often 1′ long, lustrous, brown above the middle, and reddish below. Bark ¼′—½′ thick, with a smooth light steel-gray surface. Wood hard, strong, tough, very close-grained, not durable, difficult to season, dark or often light red, with thin nearly white sapwood of 20—30 layers of annual growth; largely used in the manufacture of chairs, shoe-lasts, plane-stocks, the handles of tools, and for fuel. The sweet nuts are gathered and sold in the markets of Canada and of some of the western and middle states.
Distribution. Rich uplands and mountain slopes, often forming nearly pure forests, and southward on the bottom-lands of streams and the margins of swamps; valley of the Restigouche River, New Brunswick, to the northern shores of Lake Huron and the southern shores of Lake Superior, and southward to Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, the ravines of Rock River near Oregon, Ogle County, Illinois, Minnesota and northern Missouri; southward passing into the var. caroliniana Fern. & Rehd., differing in its ovate to short-ovate thicker leaves, usually rounded or subcordate at base, and often less coarsely serrate or undulate on the margins, glabrous or rarely densely soft pubescent below (f. mollis Fern. & Rehd.), in the often shorter involucre of the fruit with shorter and less crowded prickles; usually on the bottom-lands of streams and the borders of swamps, New Jersey, and southern Ohio and Missouri to western Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, eastern Texas, and northeastern Oklahoma; ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 3000°; probably growing to its largest size in eastern Louisiana.
The northern form is occasionally planted in the northern states as a shade and park tree.