The leaves are dark green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth that terminate each vein, 6–12 centimetres (2+1⁄4–4+3⁄4 inches) long (rarely 15 cm or 6 in), with a short petiole.

The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender (15–20 millimetres or 5⁄8–3⁄4 inch by 2–3 mm or 3⁄32–1⁄8 in) with two rows of overlapping scales on the buds.

mexicana), native to the mountains of central Mexico, is closely related, and is treated as a subspecies of American beech, but some botanists classify it as a distinct species.

The only Fagus species found in the Western Hemisphere (assuming the Mexican subspecies is treated as such), F. grandifolia is believed to have spanned the width of the North American continent all the way to the Pacific coast before the last ice age.

[9] The American beech is native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia west to southern Ontario in southeastern Canada, west to Wisconsin and south to eastern Texas and northern Florida in the United States, as well as the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, and Tabasco in Mexico.

[10] Mature specimens are rare in lowland areas as early settlers quickly discovered that the presence of the tree indicated good farmland.

Ecological succession is essentially the process of forests changing their composition through time; it is a pattern of events often observed on disturbed sites.

[11] Although sometimes found in pure stands, it is more often associated with sugar maple (forming the beech–maple climax community), yellow birch, and eastern hemlock, typically on moist, well-drained slopes and rich bottomlands.

It also casts heavy shade and is an extremely thirsty tree with high moisture requirements compared to oaks, so it has a dense, shallow root system.

Below these colonies, deposits of sooty mold develop caused by the fungus Scorias spongiosa growing saprophytically on the honeydew the insects exude.

[19] Despite their high moisture needs, beeches succumb to flooding easily and their thin bark invites damage from animals, fire, and human activities.

[citation needed] The wood is hard and difficult to cut or split, although at 43 pounds per cubic foot (0.69 g/cm3) it is not exceptionally heavy, and it also rots relatively easily.

[22] One such beech tree in Louisville, Kentucky, in what is now the southern part of Iroquois Park, bore the legend "D. Boone kill a Bar 1803.