sylvatica – of the woods

Native range: Europe to Caucasus

Leaves:

• alternate
• simple
• ovate (oval to elliptic shape)
• 2–4” long, 1.5–2.5” wide (10 x 7 cm)
• dark and shiny green
• cuneate (narrow angle) at base
• ~ dentate (ciliate when young) to entire
• undulating margin
• 5–9 pairs of veins, with short teeth at the end of the parallel veins on each side (one tooth for each secondary vein)

Flowers:

• monoecious
• male flowers in short, erect catkins
• female flowers in 2–4 flowered spikes
  • surrounded by soft-spiny involucre

Fruit:

• nuts sharply triangular-shaped in 1” long hard woody soft-spined 4-lobed husk
• borne singly or in pairs
• bitter nuts are edible, but toxic when eaten unripe and raw

Other characteristics:

• tree 30–40 (50) m.
• smooth, gray bark “elephant hide” look to older trees
• can have huge trunk (can maintain high growth rate until late maturity)
• branches to the ground
• leaves russet & golden-bronze in fall
• leaves emerge late spring (May)
• cultivar ‘purpurea’ deep black-red leaves

Relevant info:

• lifespan – 150–300 (550) years
• prone to aphids in PNW
• fine-grained hard wood is used for boatbuilding, flooring, stairs, furniture, piano pinblocks, wooden spoons, etc.
• unusual annual pattern of growth:
  • large terminal bud erupts into a shoot 45–60 cm long in early May and hangs drooping and grey with silky hairs
  • in July, the terminal bud adds an additional 30–45 cm to its length
  • shoot straightens by September
• hybridizes with Fagus orientalis, which is found in the same range though often at lower elevations (e.g., valleys)

Ecology & Adaptations:

• native southern Scandinavia to Sicily, from Northern Spain in the west to northwest Turkey in the east
• grows in humid climates with precipitation well distributed throughout the year
• in southern part of range (Spain, Sicily), where drought becomes a limiting factor, found at cooler elevations of >1,000 m., and as high as 2,000 m.
• found on hillsides and other well-drained places
• grows well on soft soils that root system can easily penetrate
• optimal growth is in humid soils situated on calcareous or volcanic parent rocks
• abundant leaf production adds organic matter to soils
• sexual reproduction:
  • as shade-tolerant species, begins flowering when ~40 years in full sun to 60–80 years in dense stands
  • masting every 2–8 yrs depending on region in Europe (i.e., periodic synchronous production of very large seed crops; sufficient seed remains for the initiation of a new crop of seedlings after seed predators have become completely satiated)
• pollinated by wind
• self-incompatible
• seed dispersal – birds and small mammals, such as squirrels, play major part in seed dispersal by hiding the seeds and failing to retrieve all of them
• vegetative regeneration:
  • produces suckers from roots, produces shoots from trunk (or stump) if cut down, broken or destroyed by fire
  • branches may produce adventitious roots and new shoots, especially when they are forced to the ground by snow pressure near the alpine limits of tree growth
• herbivore defense:
  • nuts contain saponic glycoside, which confers a bitter taste, reducing palatability, and interferes with digestion
  • leaves contain isoconiferin and syringin, which protect against insect attack
• low-nutrient conditions – association with mycorrhizae facilitates nutrient uptake
• very shade tolerant:
  • seedlings grow beneath parent trees and eventually replace them
  • morphological modifications in response to low light include larger but thinner leaves in shaded conditions, which maximizes light capture and minimizes investment in photosynthesizing structure
  • physiological modifications include higher photosynthetic capacity in shade leaves based on unit mass compared to sun leaves, though lower capacity based on unit area
  • under closed canopies, a decrease in leaf number per shoot, an increase in leaf size and regular leaf dispersion all tend to diminish the within‐shoot shading
  • in shaded environments, tree adopts a monolayer strategy (i.e., large horizontal regularly distributed leaves spread in a single layer to maximize light capture) vs. in sunny conditions, in which it adopts a multilayer strategy that enables an optimization of the light levels over the whole canopy due to an increase of light penetration, and the leaves held more erectly
  • biomass is preferentially allocated to radial growth rather than height, especially in low light fluxes
• competition – canopy of mature trees casts shade so dense that no other tree can develop beneath it
• wildlife:
  • deer browse young stands
  • nuts are important source of food for several animals and birds, including squirrels, woodpigeons, woodpeckers, and jays