FAGUS MENZIESIT, Hook. f 
THE SILVER-BEECH. 
OrpvErR—C UPULIFER-. 
(Plate LXXXIX.) 
Tue silver-beech, in common with all the New Zealand species of Fagus, is 
known as “tawhai” or ‘“ tawai’’ by the Natives. To settlers and bushmen 
it is known under various names, as ‘ brown-birch,’’ ‘ red-birch,”’ ‘‘ white- 
birch,” and ‘silver-birch.’”’ ‘ Brown-birch”’ is the name most generally used. 
I have proposed the name of ‘‘silver-beech” for general use, on account of the 
pale-grey silvery bark. 
Fagus Menziesii is a grand tree, sometimes exceeding tooft. in height, with 
a trunk from 2ft. to 4ft. in diameter, although specimens exceeding 8ft. in 
diameter are occasionally met with. Old specimens are frequently found with 
large radiating buttresses, resembling those of the pukatea, but much thicker. 
The bark is thin, whitish, and silvery, with narrow horizontal markings, 
more numerous than those of the English birch (Betula alba, Linn.), which it 
ereatly resembles: on old specimens the bark becomes rugose, and more or less 
furrowed on the lower part of the trunk. 
The twigs and leaf-stalks are clothed with fine brown hairs; the leaves are 
alternate, perfectly smooth, of hard texture and a pale colour when dry. In the 
early spring each leaf is furnished with a pair of narrow brown stipules at the 
base of the leaf-stalk, which however quickly fall away; the leaves vary con- 
siderably in shape, but are usually more or less rhomboid in outline, and seldom 
exceed fin. in length by 4in. in breadth. The margins are toothed, but the 
teeth are always blunt, although varying much in depth. 
The flowers are developed in the axils of the leaves: the males are solitary, 
and consist of a shallow membranous cup carried on a short pubescent stalk, 
and containing about twelve stamens on short slender filaments. The female 
flower is an involucral cup cleft to the base into four narrow leaves, and contain- 
ing from two to four carpels. 
The leaves of the involucral cup carry from five to seven narrow horizontal 
bands or transverse plates, cut to the base into narrow stalk-like processes, each 
carrying a round gland at its apex: these processes vary in width, and in some 
specimens are extremely fine, in others broad and flat. The fruit consists of 
two or three nuts enclosed in the woody glandular involucre. 
Fagus Menziesu is the only New Zealand species having glandular involucres, 
so that it is readily distinguished in the colony, although it closely resembles 
the Tasmanian beech (Fagus Cunninghamu, Hook. f.), and approaches F’. Moorez, 
Mueller, of New South Wales, and fF. betulotdes, Mirbel, of Cape Horn and 
Chih. 
Its symmetrical habit of growth, smooth neat foliage, and silvery bark render 
it one of the most picturesque and attractive trees in the New Zealand forests. 
This species often exhibits a singular transformation of the leaves, which are 
developed into crowded panicles of scaly fulvous bracts at the tips of the 
