American Beech

Size, growth and what to expect

American beech grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. It reaches 50 to 80 feet with a low, wide crown 40 to 80 feet across, and 120 feet on the best sites. It is long-lived, often 200 to 300 years.

Seedling trees bear in quantity at about 40 years, with good crops every two to eight years. It flowers from March to May, and the nuts ripen from September to November. Each prickly bur holds two, rarely three, triangular nuts ½ to ¾ inch long. The first nuts to fall are usually wormy or empty, and even full-sized nuts are often hollow. Bears, deer, turkeys, grouse, squirrels and blue jays eat them, and so do the caterpillars of the early hairstreak, a rare butterfly.

It grows wild from Nova Scotia and southern Quebec west to eastern Wisconsin, and south to eastern Texas and northern Florida. Its home is rich, moist woods, cool slopes and ravines, and the biggest trees grow on the river bottoms of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.

How to grow American Beech

American beech grows in full sun or shade, and it is among the most shade-tolerant of trees. Give it a deep, moist, well-drained soil, acid and rich in humus. It will not take wet or compacted ground, and it suffers in drought. Its shallow roots make it hard to grow grass beneath it. Set trees 50 feet apart, and keep each one 40 feet from a wall and more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship potted. Plant it while dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the pot and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Its shallow roots resent disturbance, so plant it young where it can stay, and keep digging and traffic off its root zone. Sow nuts in fall half an inch deep under hardware cloth, or rodents and birds take them. For spring, hold them damp in the refrigerator for 90 days first. Seedlings come up in spring.

Water every week or two through the first summer when rain is short. Deer seldom browse beech, but guard the young stem from rabbits and voles with a tube. Prune lightly, in summer or early fall, since wounds in the thin bark heal slowly and let decay in.

American beech carries male and female flowers on the same tree, but a lone tree sets mostly empty nuts, so plant two trees and let the wind carry pollen between them. In beech bark disease, an introduced scale insect opens the bark to canker fungi, and about half the mature trees die within ten years of its arrival. Beech leaf disease comes from a microscopic roundworm that feeds in the buds. Infected leaves show dark bands between the veins and turn thick and leathery, and trees of any age can die within two to seven years. No treatment is proven, though injections and phosphite drenches are being tested on yard trees. Never move beech seedlings, soil or leaves out of an area where beech leaf disease is found.