The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Fagus sylvatica
Also called European beech, common beech, Beech, Weeping Beech, Copper Beech
European beech is a large, long-lived deciduous forest tree, native to much of Europe, widely planted as an ornamental in parks and large gardens. It needs plenty of space and suits cool, humid temperate climates.
Fagus sylvatica, the European beech or common beech, is a species of tree in the flowering plant family Fagaceae. It can grow to a height of more than 40 m and has smooth silvery-grey bark, large leaf area, and a short trunk with low branches. It is native to much of Europe, growing in humid climates.
The species is cultivated as an ornamental, and has been spread beyond its original range, including in North America. Numerous cultivars have been developed, including the showy copper beech, Fagus sylvatica purpurea. Although slightly toxic due to the tannins and alkaloids they contain, the nuts are consumed by animals and humans. The trees are used for timber, such as the making of furniture.
European beech is a popular ornamental tree in parks and large gardens in temperate regions of the world. In North America, it is preferred for this purpose over the native Fagus grandifolia, which despite its tolerance of warmer climates, is slower growing, taking an average of 10 years longer to attain maturity. The town of Brookline, Massachusetts has one of the largest, if not the largest, grove of European beech trees in the United States. The 2.5-acre (1 ha) public park, called 'The Longwood Mall', was planted sometime before 1850, qualifying it as the oldest stand of European beeches in the U.S.
Since the early 19th century numerous cultivars of European beech have been made by horticultural selection, often repeatedly; they include:
The European beech is the most abundant hardwood species in Austrian, German and Swiss forests. The native range extends from the north, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Bulgaria, western Ukraine, and Romania, through Europe to France, southern England, Spain (on the Cantabrian, Iberian and Central mountain ranges), Italy, and east to northwest Turkey, where it exhibits an interspecific cline with the oriental beech (Fagus orientalis), which replaces it further east. In the Balkans, it shows some hybridisation with oriental beech; these hybrid trees are named Fagus × taurica Popl. [Fagus moesiaca (Domin, Maly) Czecz.]. In the southern part of its range around the Mediterranean and Sicily, it grows only in mountain forests, at 600–1,800 m (1,969–5,906 ft) altitude.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Fagus sylvatica by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
