You will recognize a beech tree with no problems both in winter and summer. The smooth, clear, light gray bark of the trunk and branches of the Beech are as distinctive as a Robin's red breast.
The wood is hard and smooth. It is used for furniture, tool handles, salad bowls and many other purposes.
Beechnuts are on the diet list of many mammals and birds. They were the favorite food of the huge flocks of Red Polls and Passenger Pigeons that, we are told, "darkened the skies" as they flew over Canada a century ago and have since vanished from the face of the earth. Of the millions of Passenger Pigeons that once were found, no single descendant has survived.
The beechnuts are like miniature chestnuts along the branchlets. In winter and early spring, the long, thin, sharp-pointed buds of the Beech are a good reference point for, the observant hiker. Thoreau referred to these as the “spearheads of spring”.
The leaf is 3 to 6 inches in length, with prominent veins and sharp teeth that are usually at the end of the veins. If you look carefully just after the leaves unfold in the Spring, you will find the flowers. The staminate or male flowers hang in a fluffy cluster on a thin stalk one inch or more in length.
