The American beech is native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia west to southern Ontario in southeastern Canada,
west to Wisconsin and south to eastern Texas and northern Florida in the United States.
Trees in the southern half of the range are sometimes distinguished as a variety, F. grandifolia var. caroliniana, but
this is not considered distinct in the Flora of North America. The Mexican beech (Fagus grandifolia var. mexicana),
native to the mountains of central Mexico, is closely related, and is sometimes treated as a subspecies of American
beech, but some botanists often classified as a distinct species. The only Fagus species found in the Western Hemisphere
(assuming F. mexicana is treated as a subspecies), F. grandifolia is believed to have spanned the width of the North
American continent all the way to the Pacific coast before the last ice age.
