Fagus L. (1753), the beech tree, consists of 8–10 species from around the northern hemisphere, in the family Fagaceae.

Description Trees to 40m, with a smooth, grey trunk and twigs with long, pointed buds. The leaves are deciduous, alternate, with numerous parallel, straight side-veins, sometimes with short teeth, and usually with white, silky hairs. The flowers are unisexual, produced in the axils of the new leaves, the males and females on the same tree; the males are in oval, hanging clusters, with 4–7 joined sepals, no petals, and 6–16 long stamens. The female flowers are usually short-stalked, in pairs, with 3 slender styles. Pollination is by wind. The fruits consist of a softly spiny or scaly, 4-lobed husk, enclosing 2 or 3 shining brown, 3-cornered seeds, only 1 of which is fertile. The seedlings have characteristic fan-shaped cotyledons.

Key Recognition Features The long, pointed buds in winter, and the parallel-veined leaves in summer.

Evolution and Relationships The family Fagaceae, with 8 genera, is characterised by the cupule around the seed; an acorn cup in the oak (Quercus), a 4-lobed, woody husk in the beech, and a spiny husk, silky inside in the chesnut (Castanea). The cupule has been shown to develop as an extension of the stalk below each flower. Fagus itself is close to the southern hemisphere Nothofagus, which generally has smaller leaves and seeds.

Ecology and Geography In forests in the mountains, where it often forms pure stands. One species, F. grandiflora Ehrh., is widespread in eastern North America, where it often occurs as an understorey shrub as well as a large tree. The common beech, F. sylvatica L., is found throughout Europe; subsp. orientalis (Lipsky) Greuter & Burdet, the oriental beech, is the largest tree, found in Greece, Turkey, and the Caucasus. The remaining species come from China and Japan, where F. japonica Maxim. has its fruits hanging on slender stalks to 4cm long.

Comment Beech is a valuable timber tree, traditionally used for chairs and other turned furniture, for which it was often planted on the chalk hills of southern England. Grey squirrels cause such damage to young trees that few are planted now. The seeds, commonly called beech nuts or mast, are edible and very tasty, though rather small. Beech makes a good hedge, responding well to frequent clipping and keeping its dead leaves in winter. Many varieties of F. sylvatica are cultivated as ornamentals, including various narrow-leaved cultivars, the copper beech with blackish-purple leaves, and fastigiate forms, including ‘Dawyck’; the very fine weeping beech ‘Pendula’ can cover large areas by rooting at the tips of the branches to form a ring of secondary trunks.