Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. Vll 
NO. II 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. 
JUNE 22, 1921 
Beech Trees. The Arboretum is fortunate in having in its collection 
eight of the ten species of Beech-trees v/hich have been discovered 
up to the present time and are recognized by botanists. They are 
Fagus grandifolia of eastern North America, F. ferruginea of Europe, 
F. orientalis of southwestern Asia, F. longipetiolata, F. Engleriana and 
F. lucida of western China, and F. Sieboldii and F. japonica of Japan. 
Fagus grandifolia differs from the other species so far as they are 
known here in the habit of sometimes producing stems from the roots; 
these often grow into small trees which form dense thickets round 
the parent trunk. The bark of all the species is smooth and pale, but 
that of the American tree is paler, a least, than that of the European 
tree, and the pale blue-gray bark of the stems and large branches make 
this tree in winter one of the most beautiful inhabitants of the forests 
of eastern North America. The American Beech is a common tree 
from eastern Canada to Florida and eastern Texas, and to Minnesota 
and Oklahoma. At the north it grows on uplands and mountain slopes, 
and often forms pure forests of considerable extent; southward the 
Beech varies from the northern tree in its thicker, less coarsely toothed 
leaves, and in the shorter and less crowded prickles on the fruit (var. 
caroliniana), and often grows on the bottom lands of streams or the 
borders of swamps. At the north the Beech is rarely more than sev- 
enty or eighty feet tall, but at the south it is taller and in the Miss- 
issippi valley on the rich loess of northern Louisiana and western Miss- 
issippi it is often a magnificent tree a hundred and twenty feet high 
with a tall trunk from three to four feet in diameter, and a fit asso- 
ciate of the great evergreen Magnolia (M. grandifiora) which also 
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