Beech

For the beech tree, see below. Beech is also the name of an aircraft manufacturer that was purchased by Raytheon.

Beech (Fagus) is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. The leaves are entire or sparsely toothed, from 5-15 cm long and 4-10 cm broad. The flowers are small single-sex, wind-pollinated catkins, produced in spring shortly after the new leaves appear. The fruit is a small, sharply 3-angled nut 10-15 mm long, borne in pairs in soft-spined husks 1.5-2.5 cm long, known as cupules. The nuts are edible, though bitter with a high tannin content.

The beech most commonly grown as an ornamental tree is the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica), widely cultivated in North America as well as its native Europe.

Beeches are used as food plants by some species of Lepidoptera including the Large Emerald and Pale November Moth.

The southern beeches belong to a different but related genus, Nothofagus. They are found in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia and South America.

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