ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information on uses, folk medicine, chemistry, germplasm, distribution, ecology, cultivation, harvesting, yields, energy, and biotic factors of American beech. Nuts eaten raw, dried, or cooked; they usually have a sweet taste. Sometimes roasted and ground for use as a coffee substitute. Beech buds may be eaten in the spring and young leaves cooked as greens in the spring. The inner bark is dried and pulverized for bread flour in times of need and used as emergency food. Beechnuts are used to make cakes and pies. Reported to be antidote and poison, American beech is a folk remedy for burns, frostbite, rash, and scald. Cherokee Indians chewed the inner bark as a worm treatment. Potawatomi Indians used a decoction of leaves on frostbitten extremities and made a leaf decoction compound for burns. Reported from the North American Center of Diversity, American beech is reported to tolerate frost, high pH, limestone, low pH, shade, slope, weeds, and waterlogging.
