Plant · P-150

American Hornbeam

Carpinus caroliniana

American Hornbeam is a small, iron-hard-wooded understory tree native to shaded, permanently moist stream margins across the eastern half of the country. It needs consistently damp, near-neutral soil and is especially sensitive to drought and heat, conditions found in cool bottomland shade rather than open, sun-baked ground. It offers little as food or medicine for people, but its fruit and seed feed birds and small mammals, and its foliage hosts eastern tiger swallowtail, striped hairstreak and red-spotted purple butterflies. A close relative, eastern hophornbeam, fills the same sub-canopy niche with the same iron-hard wood and butterfly hosting, while also tolerating alkaline soil, drought and heavy clay.