While previous reports of beech’s demise proved greatly exaggerated, it’s not beyond possibility they were just a few years too early. If that were the case, we’d lose one of the most important species in Britain’s history.
TWENTY years ago, stern warnings were issued about the consequences of climate warming for Britain’s native trees and woodland ecosystems. They were accompanied by dire predictions that common beech (Fagus sylvatica) would be the first native species to ‘feel the heat’ and ‘get out of the kitchen’ within half a century or less. Two decades later it’s abundantly clear that these calculations and the consequences for native trees were over-cooked. Fagus sylvatica is not going anywhere in a hurry.
But just supposing they were right and we wake up in thirty years’ time to find the ‘Mother of Forests’ no longer with us south and east of the line from south-east Wales and the Wash? This is reckoned to be the limit of natural spread of Fagus sylvatica, which has traditionally been regarded as one of the last native tree species to naturally colonise the land area now called the British Isles, before the land bridge with Europe was washed over by the English Channel. So what would we stand to lose?
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To find out you must leap-frog back and read the writings of botanists, naturalists, ecologists, poets, artists and foresters who were active at or around the turn of the 20th century – George Simonds Boulger, Edward Step, Gertrude Clarke Nuttall and Herbert Leeson Edlin and others. And then go back century by century to see what the ‘father figures’ of forests and forestry like William Gilpin, Rev. Gilbert White and John Evelyn were saying during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and all the way to Ancient Rome.
Beech in the beginning
An early trespasser on these shores said beech was absent from Britain. Julius Caesar first set foot on ‘British’ soil in 54 BC and later wrote: “In Britain there was every kind of timber as in Gaul (France) except ‘Fagum’ and the fir.
Julius Caesar appears more accomplished as a soldier and administrator than a botanist, naturalist or forester. However, there is a simple explanation; in Ancient Rome Fagum referred to sweet chestnut. Pliny, the Roman naturalist (born AD 23), wrote: “Of the various mast, that of Fagus is the sweetest.” Mast is the collective name for nuts of forest trees including beech nuts, acorns and chestnuts. The term ‘mast’ derives from the Old English mæst, meaning nuts of forest trees that have accumulated on the ground, especially those historically used for fattening domestic pigs and as a resource for wildlife.
No one doubts the sweetness of beech nuts. Pigs were allowed to forage beech woods in the autumn for the oil-rich mast and hogs fattened on beech mast were said to be lively and of digestible flesh, which was light and wholesome.
More recently the author (T. Cameron) of ‘The Wild Foods of Great Britain’, written during the Great War when reliance on home-grown food was paramount, said beech mast can be eaten raw but is better pounded to make good stuffing for wood pigeon and squirrel.
Julius Caesar would have been especially sensitive to the absence of sweet chestnut from Britain because sweet chestnut traditionally supplied his legions with a starchy ‘meal’ called ‘pollenta’.
Romans were subsequently credited with introducing Castanea sativa (sweet chestnut) into Britain.
And we now know the provenance of beech in Britain pre-dates the Roman invasion because archaeologists sifting through charcoal remains in pre-Roman Celtic settlements have discovered the remains of beech wood.
The traditional view of Fagus sylvatica as one of the last species across the land-bridge before it was washed over by the English Channel has been challenged. New evidence claims common beech did not arrive in England until about 4,000 BC, possibly as an early introduction by stone-age communities who used the nuts for food.
Half a century ago none other than Oliver Rackham challenged another established view of beech, that the alkaline, free-draining soils of the Chilterns, North and South Downs and other chalk-rich areas of southern England are natural territory of the beech tree.
Rackham claimed the original habitat of native beech in southern England, before it became a planter’s tree and was plastered across the chalk hills, was on former village commons with wet and very acid soils.
The birth of beech
Germination of beech nuts and establishment of seedling trees is what sets the scene for placement and pattern of beech trees in semi-natural woodlands.
To a degree unmatched by any other native tree, Fagus sylvatica forms pure, single-species groves to the exclusion of virtually all else.
The best description of beech seedlings came from Gertrude Clarke Nuttall in 1923, who said: “On top of the stem appear two leaves folded upwards together like butterfly’s wings when they are closed, a likeness all the greater because their exposed part – really their backs (undersides) – is silvery white like the underside of many a butterfly’s wing.
Presently the leaves part and spread, and there, poised on the white stem, is a lovely leaf-butterfly, shining green above, gleaming silver beneath.”
Three canopy stages
Most broadleaved trees exhibit two distinct stages in their foliar collectives or leaf canopies; the first when the new leaves emerge in spring and the other in autumn when the leaves colour up before falling. Beech is unique amongst British native trees because the discerning observer detects three.
The first stage is in April with emergence of verdant green leaves. Botanists of the late nineteenth century eagerly described new beech leaves as pellucid (translucently clear) although the term is not much used today.
As they mature the leaves lose this fringe of hairs but also their verdant green and transparently clear character to a darker, more opaque green leaf finished off with a glossy sheen which reflects sunlight rather than letting it through.
Writers recognised how this change delivers a much ‘heavier’ tree feature on the landscape but equally enchanting in its own right.
The best time to experience one of the other wonders of beech trees is in early summer when their leaves still look and act like pellucid sun shades (and before they darken to become reflective sun shields).
The vitality of beech is so high that the bole frequently divides at its upper part into several trunks each with its own scaffold limbs.
Poetry, prose and pure description of the autumnal attire of the beech tree outweigh that for any other native tree.
Edward Step, while praising the inviting nature of beech trees in spring and summer, said: “But when autumn has turned their deep green to orange and warm ruddy brown, and they catch the red rays of the westering sun, the tree appears to be turned into a blazing fire.”
Beech in the deep mid-winter
With leaf fall done and dusted you might think it is all over for the beech tree until the following spring, but nothing could be further from the truth. The value of the oil-rich mast as feed for free-ranging, foraging pigs is well known, but beech nuts were not the only parts of beech trees to have found uses down the ages. Fallen beech leaves were used as poultry litter and more intriguingly for stuffing mattresses.
The beech tree has much to offer the woodland walker in winter.
The leafless tree with its smooth, olive-grey bark displays a distinctive charm in the deep mid-winter.
More visible too is the spread of the roots above ground, far and wide and close together to give big and bulky beech trees a firm grip on the ground and resist winter winds which sweep through the woodland.
Beech writings
Increasingly visible too during the winter months are the writings carved into the beech tree’s thin and workable bark by lovers, and peculiar to the beech tree these engravings will grow with the tree. Indeed, through the words of Scottish Poet Thomas Campbell, a beech tree complains:
Youthful lovers in my shade
Their vows of truth and rapture made
And on my trunk’s surviving frame
Carved many a long-forgotten name
From ‘The Beech Tree’s Petition’ by Thomas Campbell (1777–1844)
Beech trees suffer such abuse during love and war. Old beech trees in France carry messages inscribed by US soldiers fighting in the beech woods of northern and central France during World War Two. Closer to home there are 200-year-old beech trees in Devon woodland, with inscriptions made by US soldiers who were taking part in ‘Exercise Tiger’ for the D-Day landings.
In fact the name beech shows writings to be at the very ‘heart-wood’ of the tree. Beech has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon tongue – boc, bece, beoce – and similar to ‘buche’ (German) and ‘bok’ (Swedish). The Germanic and Scandinavian ancestors of these races and cultures carved their writings on tablets of beech wood and our word ‘book’ has evolved from the same linguistic roots.
What about wildlife?
A combination of the beech tree’s shallow foraging roots which mop up nutrients, the deep and resilient leaf litter, in tandem with dense shade caused by leaf geometry and cast by the collective beech leaf display, may allow evolution of pure beech groves and woodlands, while simultaneously restricting the diversity of plants which can grow underneath the canopy. In fact pure beech woods are generally bereft of undergrowth with trees spaced out on barren leaf-littered ground, as the Scottish Poet Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) unveils, again in ‘The Beech Tree’s Petition’. “Oh, leave this barren spot to me! Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!”
But some spring flowers like native English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) and exotic winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) take up the challenge to survive intense shading of clustered beech trees. Wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) is even more attached to beech woods, with old beech stumps said to be the most favoured site for the soft trifoliate leaves and delicate white flowers in spring.
As spring melts into summer, more classic ‘beech-wood’ plants come into flower, including sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) thriving on shaded alkaline soils deep in beech leaf litter, and wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) as regeneration vegetation following beech wood felling on soils overlying chalk. Helleborines and orchids such as bird’s nest-orchid (Neottia nidus-avis), with its mycorrhiza fungi in symbiotic relationship, are traditionally found in beech woods.
Beech woods in autumn are one of the richest environments for toadstools and mushrooms, the spore bearing structures of Basidiomycete fungi. And not only those found under beech trees like death cap (Amanita phalloides), slimy milk Cap (Lactarius blennius) and beechwood sickener (Russula mairei) (all poisonous), but also those growing on stumps and living trees as bracket fungi like oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) and tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) (poisonous). And not to forget the truly intricate and amazing Hericium coralloides (coral tooth fungus) and Hericium erinaceus (hedgehog or lion’s mane mushroom).
What about the wood?
But foresters saw benefits from beech in these very same features – shallow root system, dense shade and deep leaf litter. A deep, mineral-rich leaf litter that was slow to rot increased soil fertility, reduced soil evaporation and, in tandem with dense shade in summer, smothered weeds. And they called beech the ‘Mother of Forests’.
However, suspicion remains that common beech, like common ash, was never fully exploited as a timber tree. The greatest claim to fame for the light-brown, close-grained, hard and strong beech wood was for turnery and domestic wood ware making in Chiltern Towns, like Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. By World War Two, the ancient craft of chair ‘bodging’ was hanging on by its fingertips in the four counties of Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, using timber from local beech woods to ply the trade, according to H.L. Edlin in his Woodland Crafts of Britain. A sad sign of the times is to see this ancient craft, using wood from such a noble tree, used as slang for ‘cowboy’ builders and incompetent ‘Do-it-Yourself’ (DIY) workers.
I recall asking a Chiltern woodland owner what would happen to his beech trees which were rapidly approaching the stage when darkening of the wood would make it unsuitable for sale as timber. He had been offered less for the standing timber than twenty years earlier and said it would almost certainly go for firewood, burning well and historically producing good charcoal. Sadly most beech now ends up in flames, but in ‘good company’ because Queen Victoria preferred beech logs from the ‘Burnham Beeches’ near Slough to feed the fires at Windsor Castle.
Last word on common beech
Fagus sylvatica is generally regarded as a tree of England in the same way that Pinus sylvestris is regarded as a tree of Scotland, although neither view is helpful when we are all struggling to save what we can in the way of trees, natural and semi-natural woodlands and commercial forests.
However, the last word goes to the native poet closely associated with the beech tree, and a Scotsman who migrated to England at a relatively young age. Poet Andrew Young (1885–1971) was born in Elgin. His life after 1920 was spent in Sussex, although his landscape poetry often returns to Scottish locations.
When the long, varnished buds of beech
Point out beyond their reach,
And tanned by summer suns
Leaves of black bryony turn bronze,
And gossamer floats bright and wet
From trees that are their own sunset,
Spring, summer, autumn I come here,
And what is there to fear?
From ‘The Beech Wood’ by Andrew Young (1885-1971)
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