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The American beech is an important forest tree of the eastern United States east of the Great Plains, excluding the Florida peninsula, and of southeastern Canada.
The leaves are dark green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth. Petioles are short.
The winter twigs are very distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender with two rows of overlapping scales on the buds.
The bark is smooth and light-gray. It is an attraction for vandals who carve names, dates, and other material into it.
One such tree in Louisville, Kentucky, in what is now the southern part of Iroquois Park, bore the legend "D. Boone kilt a bar" and the year in the late 1700s. This carving was authenticated as early as the mid-1800s, and the tree trunk section is now in the possession of the Filson Club in Louisville.
The fruit is a small, sharply-angled nut, borne in pairs in spiny husks. The American Beech is an extremely shade tolerant species. That is, they favor the shade more than other trees, and you will find them in a forest that is in either the final or first stage of succession.
The wood is of such poor quality that, until the advent of the modern chainsaw, beech trees would usually be left uncut in timbering because they weren't worth cutting. As a result, many areas today still have extensive groves of old beeches that would not naturally occur. Today, the wood is harvested for the lowest-quality uses.
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