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Beech family (Fagaceae)
Imposing tree of heights 30-40(43) m and girths 1.5-2(3) m. Can live over 700 years. Bark dark, deeply-fissured, triangular in cross-section. Boughs thick. Leaves 5-10(15) cm long, with 3–7 pairs of lobes, and a heart-shaped or lobed base. Leaf stalk of 1 cm or less. Lateral veins reach to ends of lobes and indentations. Monoecious and wind-pollinated. Female flowers, and then fruits, in clusters of 2-5 and on 5-12 cm stalk. Nuts (acorns) maturing in Sep.-Oct. are ellipsoidal in shape, c. 3.5 cm long, in cups. Banded when fresh or after soaking, they provide food for many kinds of mammal and bird. Flowering is in Apr.-May.
Grows on fertile, mesic or moist soils, in mixed/coniferous forest with oak and pine or spruce, or else in oak woodland, oak-lime-hornbeam forest and riparian forest.
Descriptions devised by the team at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, i.e. L. Witkowska-Żuk, K. Marciszewska, W. Ciurzycki, A. Obidziński and P. Zaniewski
