The American Beech Tree
Posted: Monday, September 21, 2009
by Dennis Sons
tn nursery
The Fagus grandifolia is the scientific name of the American Beech. This beech is a species that originated in eastern
The American Beech is a deciduous tree that can grow to heights of twenty to thirty five meters. They have smooth barks that are silvery gray in colour. The leaves tend to be dark green in colour and are very simple and sparsely toothed. They are quite long, reaching around five inches, and have a short petiole. The winter twigs of this tree are quite distinctive among others, as they are very long and slender and have two rows of overlapping scales that sit on the buds.
Flowers and fruits
These trees are monoecious, which means that both male and female flowers are found on the same tree. The male flowers are small and yellow with many stamens. The stamens stay crowded together while hanging off a slim, hairy stalk. Female flowers have a border of narrow, hairy, red scales and are found at the end of each stalk. The flowers bloom with new leaves during spring.
The fruit of this tree is a small, sharply-angled nut that is produced in pairs within a four-lobed, soft-spined husk. They are known as beechnuts and they mature in autumn, by splitting into four parts.
Habitat
This tree is extremely shade-loving, and favors the shade more than most other trees. It is found commonly in forests during the final stage of succession. It is sometimes found growing on its own, but more often that not it is found growing near Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch and Eastern Hemlock. It can also be found on rich bottomlands and well drained, moist slopes. Towards the southern limit, it tends to share canopy dominance with the southern Magnolia.
Uses
This species of Beech is a very important plant for forestry. The wood is extremely heavy, tough and strong, and until the modern chainsaw was invented, these trees were so hard that lumberjacks just didn't bother cutting these trees down and let them grow. This is why many areas today will still have plenty of groves of beeches that are hundreds of years old. The wood of these beech trees is used in the manufacture of flooring, furniture, containers, woodenware and handles.
The crop of nuts that is obtained from the American Beech serves as an important food source for countless species of animals. If we were to name just vertebrates that feed on this plant, they would be wild turkeys, grey and red foxes, black bears, possums, porcupines, pheasants, rabbits, white tail deer, squirrels, ruffled grouse and raccoons.
There are also many insects, birds and caterpillars that feed on the leaves as well as nuts of this tree. The passenger pigeon, which is now extinct, fed on beech nuts as one of their primary foods and it is possible that it is the clearing of these trees that lead to the bird's extinction.
This Article has been viewed 592 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.