Beech Mast

Information about Beech Mast

Not to be confused with Birch.

Beech

European Beech leaves and cupules

Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Fagales
Family:	Fagaceae
Genus:	*Fagus* L.

Species

Fagus crenata - Japanese Beech
Fagus engleriana - Chinese Beech
Fagus grandifolia - American Beech
Fagus hayatae - Taiwan Beech
Fagus japonica - Japanese Blue Beech
Fagus longipetiolata - South Chinese Beech
Fagus lucida - Shining Beech
Fagus mexicana - Mexican Beech or Haya
Fagus orientalis - Oriental Beech
Fagus sylvatica - European Beech

Beech (Fagus) is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Beech was a late entrant to Britain after the last glaciation, and may have been restricted to basic soils in the south of England^[1]. Today, beech is widely planted for hedging and in deciduous woodlands, and mature, regenerating stands occur throughout mainland Britain below about 650m^[2]. The leaves are entire or sparsely toothed, from 5-15 cm long and 4-10 cm broad. The flowers are small single-sex, wind-pollinated catkins, produced in spring shortly after the new leaves appear. The bark is smooth and light gray. The fruit is a small, sharply 3-angled nut 10-15 mm long, borne in pairs in soft-spined husks 1.5-2.5 cm long, known as cupules. The nuts are edible, though bitter with a high tannin content, and are called beechmast.

Beech grows on a wide range of soil types, acid or basic, provided they are not waterlogged. The tree canopy casts dense shade, and carpets the ground with dense leaf litter, and the ground flora beneath may be sparse.

The southern beeches Nothofagus previously thought closely related to beeches, are now treated as members of a separate family, Nothofagaceae. They are found in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia and South America.

The beech blight aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator) is a common pest of beech trees. Beeches are also used as food plants by some species of Lepidoptera - see list of Lepidoptera which feed on Beeches.

Uses

The beech most commonly grown as an ornamental tree is the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica), widely cultivated in North America as well as its native Europe. Many varieties are in cultivation, notably the weeping beech F. sylvatica 'Pendula', several varieties of Copper or purple beech, the fern-leaved beech F. sylvatica 'Asplenifolia', and the tricolour beech F. sylvatica 'roseomarginata'. The strikingly columnar Dawyck beech occurs in green, gold and purple forms, named after Dawyck Garden in the Scottish Borders, one of the four garden sites of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

The European species, Fagus sylvatica, yields a utility timber that is tough and dimensionally stable. It is widely used for furniture framing and carcass construction, flooring and engineering purposes and in plywood, but rarely as a decorative timber.

Chips of beech wood are used in the brewing of Budweiser beer as a fining agent. Beech logs are burned to dry the malts used in some German smoked beers, to give the beers their typical flavor.

Also, beech pulp is used as the basis for manufacturing a textile fibre known as Modal.

The fruit of the beech, also called "Beechnuts", are found in the small burrs that drop from tree in Autumn. They are small and triangular, are edible, have a sweet taste and are highly nutritious. (~ 20% protein content). However, they do contain organic substances which are slightly TOXIC (it has been reported that eating approx. 50 nuts may make you ill) so that they should not be eaten in larger quantities.

European Beech leaves

Flowers of Fagus sylvatica

Base of a Beech

Beech forest in Slovakia

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Preston, Pearman & Dines (2002) New Atlas of the British Flora. Oxford University Press

Margaret G. Thomas and David R. Schumann. 1993. Income Opportunities in Special Forest Products--Self-Help Suggestions for Rural Entrepreneurs. Agriculture Information Bulletin AIB?666, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC

External links

"Thomas/Schumann article"

Betula
L.

Species

Many species;
see text and classification

Birch is the name of any tree of the genus Betula (BÃ©-tu-la
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Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. Scientific classification also can be called scientific taxonomy, but should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, which lacks scientific basis.
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Plantae
Haeckel, 1866^[1]

Divisions

Green algae

Chlorophyta
Charophyta

Land plants (embryophytes)

Non-vascular land plants (bryophytes)

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Magnoliophyta

Classes

Magnoliopsida - Dicots
Liliopsida - Monocots

The flowering plants or angiosperms are the most widespread group of land plants. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms comprise the two extant groups of seed plants.
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Magnoliopsida
Brongniart

Orders

See text.
Dicotyledons, or "dicots", is a name for a group of flowering plants whose seed typically contains two embryonic leaves or cotyledons.
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Fagales
Engler

Families

See text.

The Fagales are an order of flowering plants, including some of the best known trees. The order name is derived from genus Fagus, Beeches. They belong among the rosid group of dicotyledons.
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Fagaceae
Dumortier

Genera

Castanea - Chestnuts
Castanopsis
Chrysolepis - Golden chinkapin
Colombobalanus
Cyclobalanopsis
Fagus - Beeches
Formanodendron
Lithocarpus
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Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von LinnÃ©)

Carl von LinnÃ©, Alexander Roslin, 1775. Currently owned by and hanging at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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F. crenata

Binomial name
Fagus crenata
Blume

Synonyms
Fagus ferruginea
Fagus sieboldii Fagus crenata, known as the Japanese beech, Siebold's beech
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F. grandifolia

Binomial name
Fagus grandifolia
Ehrh.

The American Beech Fagus grandifolia
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F. hayatae

Binomial name
Fagus hayatae
Palibin ex Hayata

Fagus hayatae is a species of plant in the Fagaceae family. It is endemic to Taiwan.

Source

Lu, S.Y. & Pan, F.J.

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F. longipetiolata

Binomial name
Fagus longipetiolata
Seemen

Fagus longipetiolata is a species of plant in the Fagaceae family. It is found in China and Vietnam.
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F. mexicana

Binomial name
Fagus mexicana
MartÃnez

The Mexican Beech or Haya (Fagus mexicana
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F. orientalis

Binomial name
Fagus orientalis
Lipsky

The Oriental Beech (Fagus orientalis) is a deciduous tree in the beech family Fagaceae.
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F. sylvatica

Binomial name
Fagus sylvatica
L.

The European Beech or Common Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a deciduous tree belonging to the beech family Fagaceae.
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species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
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Deciduous means "temporary" or "tending to fall off" (deriving from the Latin word decidere, to fall off) and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally.
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tree is a perennial woody plant. It is sometimes defined as a woody plant that attains diameter of 10 cm (30 cm girth) or more at breast height (130 cm above ground).
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Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea,
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Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population.
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North America is a continent ^[1] in the Earth's northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the south and west
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leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat (laminar) and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast (chlorenchyma tissue, a type of parenchyma) to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate
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Catkins, or aments, are slim, cylindrical flower clusters, wind-pollinated (anemophilous) and with inconspicous or no petals. They contain many unisexual flowers, arranged closely along a central stem which is often drooping.
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fruit has different meanings depending on context. In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant. In many species, the fruit incorporates the ripened ovary and surrounding tissues.
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nut can be either a seed or a fruit.

Botanical definitions

A nut in botany is a simple dry fruit with one seed (rarely two) in which the ovary wall becomes very hard (stony or woody) at maturity, and where the seed remains unattached or unfused with the
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Tannins are astringent, bitter-tasting plant polyphenols that bind and precipitate proteins. The term tannin refers to the use of tannins in tanning animal hides into leather; however, the term is widely applied to any large polyphenolic compound containing sufficient hydroxyls
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Nothofagaceae
Kuprian.

Genus: Nothofagus
Blume

Species
See text

Nothofagus, also known as the southern beeches
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Anthem
Advance Australia Fair ^[1]

Capital Canberra

Largest city Sydney
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