The Chestnut and the Beech.
Chapter VII
THE BEECH, CHESTNUT, AND OAKS
Family Fagaceæ
Although the beech, chestnut, and oaks are divided into three separate genera, they all belong to the family Fagaceæ. It is an interesting family in winter and deserves careful study, particularly the oaks, which have always been more or less confusing at first sight.
There is one native beech and one native chestnut, and there are eleven oaks in the Northeastern States.
American Beech Fagus americana
A beautiful, spreading tree 60 to 100 feet high, with a clean, close-fitting, smooth, gray bark. Buds narrow and sharp-pointed, with many overlapping scales. Twigs smooth, slender, and reddish brown, with alternate leaf-scars. Fruit a prickly burr inclosing two triangular, sharp-ridged nuts, the burr hanging on the trees well into the winter.
The beech is not so graceful as the elm, nor so lofty as the pine, nor so stalwart as the oak, but there is not a tree in the woods so distinctly lovable. In every detail the beech has a dainty, lady-like beauty, and among the leafless trees of the winter woods it is as fair as a flower, with its clean gray bole, its polished brown stems, and its slender, pointed, lance-like buds. There is no other tree with which the beech may be confused, and its characteristics are so pronounced and unvarying that there is little difficulty in recognizing it immediately in passing. When it has grown up partly shaded by other trees it has a lofty bearing, but when it has developed in open ground it is round-headed and spreading in shape. The beech trees from which the following photograph was taken were once shaded by other trees, and show this in the height they have attained and the absence of spreading, lateral branches.
BEECH TREES
Fagus Americana