BEECH (Feigns Americana, Sweet). 50 to 80 feet. Com pact, round-topped tree with numerous horizontal and droop ing branches, ending in slim, silky-coated twigs, set with pencil-like, pointed buds, 1 inch long in winter, shining, brown. Bark close-grained, gray, often almost white, usually blotched and roughened on old trunks by warty excrescences. Branches smooth, gray, twigs brown, silky, smooth, lustrous. Wood red, close-grained, hard, strong, not durable, lustrous when polished, used for plane stocks, shoe lasts, chairs, tool-handles, flooring, and for fuel. Leaves clustered on ends of short side twigs; oblong-ovate, pointed, strongly veined, saw-toothed, thin, smocth, dark bluish green above, yellow-green, lustrous, at first hairy, beneath, petiole hairy. Flowers May, monce
cious, staminate in pendant, yellow-green balls; pistillate solitary or paired on silky stems in arils of upper leaves. Fruit, paired triangular nuts in prickly, 4-valved pod or husk. Kernel sweet, edible, in thin, brown shell. Dist.: Rich bottom land, Nova Scotia to Lake Huron and northern Wisconsin; south to Florida, Missouri, and Texas. Often planted for shade and ornament,