The beechnut, Fagus ferruginea, belonging to the oak family, is one of the giants of the forest, growing to great size and age.  Even very old beech trees have smooth bark and this, in earlier and more rustic days, was much used for the romantic carving of lovers’ names, as scars still visible on such ancient trees testify.  The wood itself is dense and hard, even more so than hard maple, and is considered good lumber.  Beechnut is one of the few nut trees with a more shallow and ramified root system as contrasted with that of most, which, as in the oak, walnut and hickory, is a tap root system.  This fact suggests that in those localities where beeches grow wild, grafts made on such trees, and transplanted, would survive and grow well.

Perhaps one of the reasons why very little propagation is done with beeches is that no outstanding variety has ever been discovered.  Although the nut shell is thin and the meat sweet and oily, the kernel is so small that one must crack dozens of them to get a satisfying sample of their flavor.  This, of course, prevents their having any commercial value as a nut.  There is also the fact that the beechnut is the slowest growing of all the common nut trees, requiring from twenty to thirty years to come into bearing as a seedling.  Of course this could be shortened, just as it is in propagating hickories and pecans, by making grafts on root systems which are ten or more years old, as explained in the chapter on heartnuts.  However, I know of no nursery in which beechnuts are propagated in this way.

My attempts to grow beechnut trees in Wisconsin have met with little success.  About the year 1922, I obtained 150 trees from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries.  I planted these on level ground which had clay near the surface with limestone about a foot under it.  Although all of these trees seemed to start satisfactorily, some even growing about a foot, within two or three years they had all died.  I decided they were not hardy but I now realize that the character of the soil was responsible for their gradual death; they should be planted in a limestone or calcareous soil, preferably of the fine sandy type, the main requisite being plenty of moisture because of their shallow root system.  Since then, I have purchased beechnut seeds several times from various seedsmen, but none of these seeds has ever sprouted.  I think this is because beechnuts, like chestnuts, must be handled with great care to retain their viability.

In 1938, I ordered 100 beechnut trees from the Hershey Nurseries of Downingtown, Pennsylvania.  Although these trees were set in sandy soil, there are now only about five of them alive, and of these, only four are growing well enough to suggest that they will some day become big trees.

Beechnuts must be protected against mice and rabbits as these species of rodents are very fond of bark and young growth of these trees and I have every reason to believe that deer are in the same category.