Fagus orientalis, the Oriental Beech, is a deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 in the beech

Beech

Beech is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia and North America.-Habit:...

 family Fagaceae

Fagaceae

The family Fagaceae, or beech family, comprises about 900 species of both evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs, which are characterized by alternate simple leaves with pinnate venation, unisexual flowers in the form of catkins, and fruit in the form of cup-like nuts. Fagaceous leaves are often...

. The natural range extends from southeast Bulgaria's Strandja mountain through northwest Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 east to the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

 and Alborz

Alborz

Alborz , also written as Alburz, Elburz or Elborz, is a mountain range in northern Iran stretching from the borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the northwest to the southern end of the Caspian Sea, and ending in the east at the borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan...

 Mountains of Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. It is restricted to mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

 forests, at 500-2,100 m altitude. The Oriental beech has colonized even lower altitudes in the Strandja mountain of Bulgaria (as low as 200-300 m. above sea-level), due to the unique local micro-climate, where it forms typical Oriental beech-Rhododendron ponticum

Rhododendron ponticum

Rhododendron ponticum, called Common Rhododendron or Pontic Rhododendron, is a species of Rhododendron native to southern Europe and southwest Asia.-Description:...

 forests as well as with other evergreen shrubs. It is a large tree, capable of reaching heights of up to 45 m tall and 3m trunk diameter, though more typically 25-35 m tall and up to 1.5 m trunk diameter. It is closely related to the European Beech

European Beech

Fagus sylvatica, the European Beech or Common Beech, is a deciduous tree belonging to the beech family Fagaceae.-Natural range:...

 (F. sylvatica), and intergrades with it in the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

 and northwest Turkey; these hybrids with European Beech are named Fagus x taurica.

The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are alternate, simple, and entire or with a slightly crenate margin, 7-15 cm long and 5-9 cm broad, with 7-13 veins on each side of the leaf (6-7 veins in F. sylvatica). The bud

Bud

In botany, a bud is an undeveloped or embryonic shoot and normally occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of the stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormant condition, or it may form a shoot immediately. Buds may be specialized to develop flowers or short shoots, or may have...

s are long and slender, 15-30 mm long and 2-3 mm thick, but thicker (to 4-5 mm) where the buds include flower buds.

The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are small catkin

Catkin

A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster, with inconspicuous or no petals, usually wind-pollinated but sometimes insect pollinated . They contain many, usually unisexual flowers, arranged closely along a central stem which is often drooping...

s which appear shortly after the leaves in spring. The seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s are small triangular nuts

Nut (fruit)

A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

15-20 mm long and 7-10 mm wide at the base; there are two nuts in each cupule, maturing in the autumn 5-6 months after pollination; the cupule differs from that of European Beech in having flattened, slightly leaf-like appendages at the base (slender, soft spines in European Beech).

Sources

• Oriental beech on Floridata
• Fagus Orientalis, Plants for a Future