American Hornbeam

There’s a lot to love about the Missouri native tree/shrub American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana). For starters, this tree has more colorful common names than nearly any other tree: besides hornbeam, it is also referred to as musclewood, ironwood, blue beech and water beech, to name a few. If you have Missouri Conservation Department’s “Trees of Missouri”, you know that the term “hornbeam” probably refers to the hardness (horn) of the wood. “Beam” is an Old English word for tree. Since the wood is harder than any tree other than flowering dogwood in the Eastern US, it is used to make golf clubs. The name “musclewood” refers to beautiful — sensous! — rippled appearance of the bark.

Hornbeam is commonly found in Missouri woods as an unassuming understory tree. Slow-growing, the tree generally grows as a large, multi-stemmed shrub. Mature, it reaches heights of 25 to 30 feet with an attractive globe-like shape. The rippled bark and yellow fall foliage are, perhaps, its most noticeable features. It is monoecious, which means it has separate male and female catkins on the same plant. It’s fruiting structures are unusual, with tiny nutlets subtended by large bracts that form 6-inch-long clusters. When grown in full sun, it can easily be pruned into a medium-sized tree, which shows off its subtle but attractive features. There is musclewood in the wild little garden space tucked between the Ag Building and the Anheuser-Bush Natural Resources building. The small tree in the photo on this page is in the Purdy Collection, located on the east side of the Life Sciences building.

 

Content by Chris Starbuck & Jan Wiese-Fales. Photos by Chris Starbuck