The Common or European Beech is native to most of Europe. It is a beautiful, high quality tree that is expensive to buy at nurseries, being sort of slow growing of about 1 foot/year and the need to be transplanted carefully. It is not common in the US, but one can find some specimens planted at estates, well-to-do neighbourhoods, and town parks. Some larger, diverse, conventional nurseries sell some. its leaves are more rounded and smaller (to 4 inches long x 2.5 inches wide) than the American Beech and its smooth gray bark is darker than the American's. The European species is more adaptable to more landscapes than the American, having a larger range of tolerating heavier and less acid soils, though not as tolerant of the strong heat of the South. There is quite a number of different cultivars of this species that have variegated leaves, purple leaves, tricolor leaves, cut-leaf leaves, weeping forms, contorted forms, and combinations of all that. Unfortunately, there is a beech bark disease from Europe that can kill beech trees from a wooly aphid that punctures bark so that a coral spot fungus can invade and kill areas of bark, even girdling the whole trunk. I saw one large European Beech die that way in 2016 in West Chester, PA in a condominium landscape. I would say not to give up on beech trees.

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