Fagus grandifoliaEhrh.

American beech

WFO wfo-0000966434 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Jack Forrester
fig. a Jack Forrester, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205822331
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. b Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205770288
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. c Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205771388
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. d Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205753015
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. e Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203505268
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. f Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201589579
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Nick Kleinschmidt
fig. g Nick Kleinschmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204552636
Fagus grandifolia, photographed by Nick Kleinschmidt
fig. h Nick Kleinschmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203388044

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 156 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 156 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Fagus alba Raf.
  • Fagus americana (Pers.) Sweet
  • Fagus americana f. caroliniana (Loudon) Farw.
  • Fagus atropunicea (Marshall) Sudw.
  • Fagus ferruginea Aiton
  • Fagus ferruginea Aiton
  • Fagus ferruginea var. caroliniana Loudon
  • Fagus grandifolia f. grandifolia
  • Fagus grandifolia f. mollis Fernald & Rehder
  • Fagus grandifolia f. pubescens Fernald & Rehder
  • Fagus grandifolia subsp. heterophylla Camp
  • Fagus grandifolia var. caroliniana (Loudon) Fernald & Rehder
  • Fagus grandifolia var. grandifolia
  • Fagus grandifolia var. mexicana (Martinez) Little
  • Fagus grandifolia var. typica Rehder
  • Fagus heterophylla Raf.
  • Fagus latifolia L'Hér. ex Steud.
  • Fagus mexicana Martinez
  • Fagus nigra Raf.
  • Fagus purpurea Desf.
  • Fagus rotundifolia Raf.
  • Fagus sylvatica var. americana Pers.
  • Fagus sylvatica var. atropunicea Marshall
  • Fagus sylvatica var. ferruginea (Aiton) N.Coleman

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.