

FAGACE^ 217 



1. FAGUS, L. Beech. 



Trees, with smooth pale bark, hard close-grained wood, and elongated acute 

 bright chestnut-brown buds, their inner scales accrescent and marking the base of 

 the branchlets with persistent ring-like scars. Leaves convex and plicate along the 

 veins in the bud, thick and firm, deciduous; their petioles short, nearly terete, in, 

 falling leaving small elevated semioval leaf-scars, with marginal rows of minute 

 fibre- vascular bundle-scars; stipules linear-lanceolate, infolding the leaf in the bud. 

 Flowers vernal after the unfolding of the leaves; staminate short-pedicellate, in 

 globose many-flowered heads on long drooping bibracteolate stems at the base 

 of the shoots of the year or from the axils of their lowest leaves, and composed of 

 a subcampanulate 4-8-lobed calyx, the lobes imbricated in aestivation, ovate and 

 rounded, and 8-1G stamens inserted on the base of and longer than the calyx, with 

 slender filaments and oblong green anthers; pistillate in 2-4-flowered stalked 

 clusters in the axils of upper leaves of the year, surrounded by numerous awl-shaped 

 hairy bracts, the outer bright red, longer than the flowers, deciduous, the inner 

 shorter and united below into a 4-lobed involucre becoming at maturity woody, 

 ovoid, thick-walled, and covered by stout recurved prickles, inclosing the usually 3 

 nuts and ultimately separating into 4 valves; calyx urn-shaped, villous, divided into 

 4 or 5 linear-lanceolate acute lobes, its 3-angled tube aduate to the 3-celled ovary 

 surmounted by 3 slender recurved pilose styles green and stigmatic toward the apex 

 and longer than the involucre; ovules 2 in each cell. Nut ovate, unequally 3-angled, 

 acute or winged at the angles, concave and longitudinally ridged on the sides, 

 chestnut-brown and lustrous, tipped with the remnants of the styles, marked at the 

 base by a small triangular scar, with a thin shell covered on the inner surface with 

 rufous tomentum. Seed dark chestnut-brown, suspended with the abortive ovules 

 from the tip of the hairy dissepiment of the ovary pushed by the growth of the seed 

 into one of the angles of the nut; cotyledons sweet, oily, plano-convex. 



Fagus as here limited is confined to the northern hemisphere, with a single 

 American species and four or five Old World species; of these one is widely dis- 

 tributed through Europe to southwestern Asia, and the others are confined to eastern 

 temperate Asia. Of exotic species, the European Fagus st/lvatica, L., an important 

 timber-tree, is frequently planted for ornament in the eastern states in several of 

 its forms, especially those with purple leaves, and with pendulous branches. The 

 wood of Fagus is hard and close-grained. The sweet seeds are a f&vorite food of 

 swine, and yield a valuable oil. 



Fagus is the classical name of the Beech-tree. 



1. Fagus Americana, Sweet. Beech. 



Leaves remote at the ends of the branches and clustered on short lateral 

 branchlets, oblong-ovate, acuminate, with long slender points, coarsely serrate, with 

 spreading or incurved triangular teeth except at the gradually narrowed wedge- 

 shaped rounded or cordate base, when they unfold pale green and clothed on the 

 lower surface and margins with long pale lustrous silky hairs, at maturity dull dark 

 bluish green above, light yellow-green and very lustrous below, with tufts of long 

 pale hairs in the axils of the veins, 2^'-5' long, l'-3' broad, with slender yellow 

 midribs covered above with short pale hairs, and slender primary veins running 

 obliquely to the points of the teeth, turning bright clear yellow in the autumn; their 

 petioles hairy, \'-% long; stipules ovate-lanceolate on the lower leaves, strap-shaped 



