Species: Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.

 

 

Recently I explored Mill Creek Nature Preserve for the first time, and encountered the southernmost population of American beech trees. I was particularly excited because I've read all about beech trees in Peter Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees. It's a wonderful little book that has completely changed the way I think about trees, and I would recommend it to everyone. Wohlleben has experience with European beeches, which are fascinating trees with a number of incredible adaptations. They talk to each other, feed each other, encourage their offspring to grow slow and straight, and create their own microclimates. America isn't known for its sprawling forests of massive beeches the way Central Europe is, but our beech trees still have a stately look about them, at least from what I gather on Google images. The specimens in Florida are quite small and scraggly, likely because this is the hot extreme of their temperature range, so they are outcompeted in this landscape by oak, magnolia, sweetgum, and others.

In Europe the American beech is known as large-leaved beech, and it used to coexist alongside the common beech in Europe until it was wiped out in the last ice age.

 

 

 

Mill Creek is a large forest, and I'd like to go back in summer and explore some of the other trails when the trees are in full flush. There were many interesting trees you don't usually encounter on Gainesville trails, and many were labeled, but I think I went down the trail backwards from the intended direction because I didn't encounter any labels until the last part of my trip. The pockets of beech were marked on the trail map. I went along enthusiastically inspecting every unknown broadleaf tree, everything with serrated leaves, convinced I'd found a beech. Beech leaves can be difficult to tell from hophornbeam, river birch, white ash, and others. A surefire identification method is the underside of the leaf, which is covered in silky hairs on a beech. This is known as pubescence, which sounds gross but just means it's hairy. It's quite soft to the touch. What is the evolutionary purpose of these hairs? Might have something to do with conserving water during gas exchange.

Beech leaves sit on their branches in broad, flat planes, giving the whole tree a tiered appearance like a well-pruned bonsai. The leaves are large, with an ovate shape that starts and ends with tapered points but flares out wide in the middle. They are smooth medium green on top, with distinct veins that run all the way to the margins. The margins are serrate, but not hugely, and you could miss it if you're not looking for it. Contrast this with the exaggerated serrations of the river birch leaf, which is smaller with a wider base narrowing to a triangular point. Or the hophornbeam, which has fine sawtooth double serrations (smaller teeth between the larger teeth).

 

 

Other interesting plants at Mill Creek include cinnamon fern, parsley haw, horse sugar, gallberry, musclewood, wild olive, and sparkleberry. Fun fact, many common blueberry varieties are derived from Florida's native Vaccinium species such as highbush blueberry and sparkleberry.

 

 

 

Sources

 

Wohlleben, Peter. The Hidden Life of Trees. Greystone Books, 2015.

 

https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/misc/ag_654/volume_2/fagus/grandifolia.htm