Fagus sylvaticaL.

European beech

WFO wfo-0000966507 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205218503
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. b Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205534619
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. c Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205819226
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. d Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205596388
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. e Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205535655
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Stephan Mende
fig. f Stephan Mende, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204706297
Fagus sylvatica, photographed by Mattia Menchetti
fig. g Mattia Menchetti, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204836531

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 155 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 155 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 52 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Castanea fagus Scop.
  • Fagus aenea Dum.Cours.
  • Fagus asplenifolia Dum.Cours.
  • Fagus cochleata hort. ex Domin
  • Fagus comptoniifolia Desf.
  • Fagus crispa hort. ex Dippel
  • Fagus cristata Dum.Cours.
  • Fagus cucullata hort. ex Dippel
  • Fagus cuprea Hurt. ex A.DC.
  • Fagus echinata Gilib.
  • Fagus incisa hort. ex Dippel
  • Fagus laciniata Hort ex A.DC.
  • Fagus pendula Dum.Cours.
  • Fagus purpurea (Aiton) Dum.Cours.
  • Fagus purpurea var. roseomarginata Cripps
  • Fagus quercirdes Pers. ex Dippel
  • Fagus salicifolia hort. ex A.DC.
  • Fagus sylvatica f. aureovariegata C.K.Schneid.
  • Fagus sylvatica f. bornyensis Simon-Louis ex Beissn.
  • Fagus sylvatica f. cochleata Dippel
  • Fagus sylvatica f. cristata (Loudon) Dippel
  • Fagus sylvatica f. fastigiata Simon-Louis ex K.Koch
  • Fagus sylvatica f. grandidentata Dippel
  • Fagus sylvatica f. heterophylla (Loudon) Dippel

and 28 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.