American beech (Fagus grandifolia): what the agencies record

This page reports what US federal publications say about one tree. It does not identify trees from descriptions or photos and does not say what should be done with any tree. The family overview, tree species in the agency records, explains the sources and holds the comparison table. The European species has its own page, common beech.

At a glance

Item	What the source records
Scientific name	Fagus grandifolia Ehrh., beech family (Silvics)
Native status, USDA PLANTS	Native in Canada and in the lower 48 states
Size, Silvics	Under optimum conditions 37 m (120 ft) tall; generally 18 to 24 m (60 to 80 ft). One of the largest on record, in Michigan, is 135 cm (53.2 in) in diameter and 49 m (161 ft) tall
Age, Silvics	May reach 300 to 400 years; trees older than 366 years found in Pennsylvania
Green weight of the wood, NRS-38	54 lb per cubic foot, without bark

Native range and where it grows

The Silvics of North America handbook (Agriculture Handbook 654, 1990) calls American beech the only species of its genus in North America and a slow-growing, common, deciduous tree. It gives a range that starts at Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and runs west through Maine, southern Quebec and southern Ontario to northern Michigan and eastern Wisconsin. The range reaches south to southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas, southeastern Oklahoma and eastern Texas, and east to northern Florida, with its northeast edge in southeastern South Carolina and a variety in the mountains of northeastern Mexico. The handbook says the species once extended as far west as California. The largest trees are in the alluvial bottom lands of the Ohio and lower Mississippi River valleys and along the western slopes of the southern Appalachians.

Silvics says loamy soils with high humus content are more favorable than lighter soils, that timber stands with many beech are found on soils from pH 4.1 to 6.0 and seldom where pH exceeds 7.0, and that few tree species are less tolerant of flooding during the growing season: in a Kentucky study, beech trees whose root crowns were submerged for 2 weeks in summer were killed. It is a major component of three forest cover types, Sugar Maple-Beech-Yellow Birch, Red Spruce-Sugar Maple-Beech and Beech-Sugar Maple, and a minor species in 17 others.

Flowers and nuts

The species is monoecious. The handbook says flowers appear in late April or early May when leaves are about one-third grown, and are quite vulnerable to spring frosts. Nuts, usually two in each bur, mature in one growing season and ripen between September and November. Substantial seed production begins at about 40 years, with good crops at intervals of 2 to 8 years, and most seeds simply drop under the parent tree, though bluejays may carry many several kilometers. The handbook says beechnuts are an important food for wildlife and that beech is the only nut producer in the northern hardwood type.

Suckers, shade and roots

Silvics classes beech as very tolerant of shade, and in some parts of its range the most tolerant species. It says stumps of young trees sprout well but that ability fades after 10 cm (4 in) in diameter. The tree develops large numbers of root suckers, and reproduction is almost exclusively by suckering in the "beech gaps" of the Adirondacks, in Maine and near the northern and western limits of the range. The handbook says root injury seems necessary to start root sprouts. It describes the root system as generally shallow, reaching 1.5 m (5 ft) or more in deep soils, and notes that beech is seldom severely browsed by white-tailed deer.

Wood

The Wood Handbook (FPL-GTR-282, 2021) describes nearly white sapwood and reddish-brown heartwood with little line between them, little figure and close, uniform texture, and calls the wood heavy, hard, strong and high in resistance to shock, highly suitable for steam bending, excellent for turning and rather easily treated with preservatives. It says beech shrinks substantially. Silvics lists flooring, furniture, turned products, veneer, plywood, railroad ties, baskets, pulp and charcoal, and says the wood is especially favored for fuelwood because of high density and good burning qualities.

Wood Handbook figure	Green	At 12% moisture content
Specific gravity (Table 5-3b)	0.56	0.64
Modulus of rupture, lbf per square inch (Table 5-3b)	8,600	14,900
Side hardness, lbf (Table 5-3b)	850	1,300

The green weight is in the NRS-38 table, the same figure used in the log weight calculator.

Damaging agents the handbook names

Beech bark disease. Silvics calls it the most serious problem of the species. It says the disease starts when the beech scale attacks the bark and makes it susceptible to canker fungi of the genus Nectria, that the scale and fungus complex was introduced to Nova Scotia from Europe around 1890, and that by the handbook's date it was found throughout New England, New York and northern Pennsylvania. It records a 70,000-acre infestation detected in northeastern West Virginia in 1981 and the disease as far west as Toronto, Ontario. The handbook says mortality may be so severe on first arrival that a large proportion of big mature beech trees are killed.
Decay fungi. More than 70 decay fungi, which the handbook calls a record for a hardwood species, have been reported on beech, entering mainly through broken branches that heal slowly. The shoestring fungus (Armillaria) is named as the most important root pathogen.
Sucking insects. The thin bark makes beech vulnerable to many, including the beech blight aphid and the giant bark aphid. Heavy outbreaks of oystershell scale have caused severe crown dieback and death of entire stands. See the oystershell scale page.
Defoliators. The saddled prominent is the most damaging, with forest tent caterpillar, gypsy moth, fall cankerworm and Bruce spanworm causing occasional heavy local defoliation.
Weather and fire. Frost cracks in cold regions, damage or death at minus 40 to minus 45 degrees C after severe drought, and late spring frosts. The thin bark makes the tree highly vulnerable to fire, sunscald, logging, pruning or disease.

For who takes reports of regulated pests, see reporting a pest in the United States, and pests and diseases by country sets out which ones agencies regulate. Beech leaf disease has its own page.