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A large tree, commonly 100 feet high (attaining 130 to 140 feet under very favourable conditions), with a girth of 20 feet or more. Bark usually grey and smooth, but often in old trees becoming fissured and scaly, especially near the base. Branchlets of two kinds; the short shoots ringed and bearing only a terminal bud in winter and one, two, or three leaves in summer; the long shoots slender, glabrous, with many leaves in two lateral rows (in winter the buds are seen arising from the upper side of the twig, the leaf-scars being on the lower side).

Leaves: deciduous, alternate, two-ranked, varying in size with altitude and vigour, those of trees at high elevations being much smaller; generally oval, somewhat acuminate at the apex, slightly unequal at the base, undulate or toothed in margin, with 6–10 pairs of lateral nerves, which with the midrib are raised on the under surface of the leaf, and are more or less pubescent.

Flowers: arising in the axils of the leaves of the young shoots; the male heads by long pendulous stalks, the female involucres by short erect stalks above the male flowers on the same branchlet or on separate branchlets. The true fruits are usually two together enclosed in a woody involucre, which is beset by prickles. Each fruit contains a seed, triangular in shape like the fruit containing it. The seed hangs from the top of the cell and has no albumen.

Seedling: the seedling of the beech has a long primary root and a stout radicle, 1–2 inches long, bearing 2 large sessile oval cotyledons, which are dark green above and whitish beneath. The first true leaves of the beech are opposite, ovate, obtuse, and crenate, borne on the stem an inch or so above the cotyledons. Above this pair other leaves are borne alternately, and the first season's growth terminates in a long pointed bud with brown imbricated scales.

The common beech is distinguishable at all seasons by its bark, which is only simulated by the hornbeam; but in the latter tree the stem is usually more or less fluted. In winter the pointed buds, arranged distichously on the long shoots and composed of many imbricated scales, are characteristic; while in length they exceed