Distribution. Banks of streams and ponds in southern Delaware and Maryland, and in south central Oklahoma (Johnson and Bryan Counties).
Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in the eastern states and hardy as far north as Massachusetts.
X. FAGACEÆ.
Trees, with watery juice, slender terete branchlets marked by numerous usually pale lenticels, alternate stalked penniveined leaves, and narrow mostly deciduous stipules. Flowers monœcious, the staminate in unisexual heads or aments, composed of a 4—8-lobed calyx, and 4 or 8 stamens, with free simple filaments and introrse 2-celled anthers, the cells parallel and contiguous, opening longitudinally; the pistillate solitary or clustered, in terminal unisexual or bisexual spikes or heads, subtended by an involucre of imbricated bracts becoming woody and partly or entirely inclosing the fruit, and composed of a 4—8-lobed calyx adnate to the 3—7-celled ovary with as many styles as its cells and 1 or 2 pendulous anatropous or semianatropous ovules in each cell. Fruit a nut 1-seeded by abortion, the outer coat cartilaginous, the inner membranaceous or bony. Seed filling the cavity of the nut, without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous; cotyledons fleshy, including the minute superior radicle; hilum, basal, minute.
The six genera of this widely distributed family occur in North America with the exception of Nothofagus, separated from Fagus to receive the Beech-trees of the southern hemisphere.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GENERA.
Staminate flowers fascicled in globose-stalked heads; the pistillate in 2—4-flowered clusters.1. [Fagus.] Staminate flowers in slender aments. Pistillate flowers in 2—5-flowered clusters below the staminate, in bisexual aments. Nut inclosed in a prickly burr. Leaves deciduous; ovary 6-celled; nut maturing in one season; branchlets lengthening by an upper axillary bud; bud-scales 4.2. [Castanea.] Leaves persistent; ovary 3-celled; nut maturing at the end of the second season; branchlets lengthening by a terminal bud; bud-scales numerous.3. [Castanopsis.] Nut inclosed only partly in a shallow cup covered by slender recurved scales united only at the base, free above.4. [Lithocarpus.] Pistillate flowers solitary, in few-flowered unisexual spikes; nut more or less inclosed in a cup covered by thin or thickened scales, closely appressed or often free toward its rim.5. [Quercus.]
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.