The Fruits: Towards the end of September, the prickly looking woody capsule splits open into four segments. Embedded in its lining of silky yellow hairs, we find two triangular brown nuts with pointed ends. Each nutlet has a thin veneer-like shiny brown shell. In Britain these shells are often empty, but in productive years, which may only occur here with intervals of 3-10 years, we find a longish triangular nutlet, light brown in colour.

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Cultivation

Young beeches should never be cut, shaped or pruned until they are securely established in their final position. Once established, Beech can be pruned closely into a beautiful hedge, aided by the fact that the plant will tolerate shade. Beech hedges are a useful windbreak even throughout the winter, because the dead leaves stay on the branches. One of the most famous Beech hedges in the country can be found in Meikleour, Scotland, on the A93 main road from Perth to Braemar. It was planted in 1745 and is 550 metres long and 30 metres high.
Beech trees do not like to be coppiced and will not survive this treatment as a regular practice. However, Beech woods have been pollarded successfully. The branches are cut about three metres above the ground and new growth can be harvested approximately every 10 to 12 years. Pollarding can be thought of as a sort of coppicing in the air. The practice also has the effect that all new growth is beyond the reach of foraging deer and cattle.
Established trees can be very difficult to transplant. The roots spread very wide just under the surface of the soil and it is difficult not to injure them in transplanting. Another factor is that Beech trees live in close symbiosis with fungi, which act as its root hairs and suck up water and nutrients for the tree, in return for being fed carbohydrates obtained by photosynthesis. Whenever young Beech trees have to be transplanted, it is good practice to try to incorporate as much as possible the earth in which it grew. This will facilitate the transfer of symbiotic fungi and its spores. Unfortunately, a transplanted Beech is very likely to wither away from starvation, due to a damaged root system.

Beeches are planted for a variety of purposes. They make versatile timber, good shelterbelts, useful hedges and produce magnificent ornamental specimens. Beeches are also used sometimes as soil improvers. The amount of potash in the leaves and the capacity of the root system to promote the circulation of air throughout the soil, has earned it the name "Mother of the Forest" in Central Europe. For this reason, young Beech trees are sometimes used as a nurse crop to other broad leaved trees in forestry practice.
Beech will potentially grow anywhere, as long as the subsoil is not waterlogged, although it will , of course, grow slower on poor soils. In addition, the tree has such s strong vitality, that it will withstand bad weather, exposed, windswept sites (even near the sea) and erosion better than most other trees.

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Traditional Uses of the Wood

Opinions about the value of Beech timber can vary enormously. It has been said that the Beech was valued more for its pig-fattening mast (the seeds) than the wood. Others will tell you that it is a versatile useful wood. These contradictions will be more easily understood when we examine the characteristics of the wood.
The wood is short-grained, yet dense and hard. The short grain makes it easy to work and excellent for use on a wood-turning lath. However, it also makes the  wood brittle and lacking in toughness. Its density and hardness make up for this to some extent, so its usefulness depends a lot on what we want to make. It may not be the right sort of wood to create a tool handle from, because this has to be tough and elastic and is ideally made from a long grained wood such as Ash, but Beech would be excellent for a mallet head of a chopping block.
Beech wood is not very durable outdoors, with the exception of objects which are kept constantly wet, such as water wheels. Constant soaking appears to increase durability miraculously. This explains why it was often used for ship building when tougher woods, such as Oak, were not available.

Even for indoor use, the wood will not last as long as other hardwoods, but sealing it with oils, wax polishes and other preparations helps. James Brown ("The Forester", Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh & London, 1871) says: "The wood of the beech, when in a young state, is proverbially of short duration."
It is obviously not a wood that should be used where structural strength is required, such as beams and joists, nor should it be used for purposes which require long use and low maintenance, such as roofing timbers, but it would be eminently suitable as a lovely flooring material.
Beech has some advantages too. Apart from its easy workability, it is easily bent after treatment with steam and its denseness and hardness make it an excellent wood for everyday wear and tear. Thus its traditional uses include bent-wood furniture (such as Windsor chairs), other items of cheap furniture, toys, shoe-heels, rolling pins, platters, ice-cream and take-away chip spoons, clothes pegs and so on. It was also used for panels of carriages, carpenters planes, stonemasons mallets, granary shovels and many articles in turnery. On the continent it was used for parquet-flooring and in France it was made into the famous 'sabots', wooden shoes that kept out the damp better than any other wood. Beechwood is relatively free of taste and smells and so it was often used for kitchen utensils, bowls and spoons. In Denmark it was used for making butter-casks.
Once the problem of protective impregnation was solved, large amounts of Beech were used on the European continent as railway sleepers.

The colour of the wood is cream to medium-brown. It often has streaks of different colour, but these do not affect strength. The rays are more distinctive than the growth rings, which causes the wood to be flecked, rather than to have spectacular wood-grain patterns. The moisture content of green Beech is 90% (Ash 50% and Elm 140%).
As with all woods, these statements are to some extent generalisations. Beech which is grown in ideal circumstances will have a more even, straighter grain than that of an exposed, windswept tree on a poor rocky soil, which may be harder to work.
Beech is an excellent firewood after a year's seasoning. It burns with a bright flame and has superior heating power. Consequently it was used extensively as a domestic fuel.
The wood has also been used for making charcoal, especially for colour-manufacturers, but also for the gun powder industry.
In Britain, large plantations of Beech were grown in the Chilterns during the last two centuries to service the chair-making industry. Because of its versatility, being strong, yet easily worked, Beech has replaced Oak as the major hardwood timber crop in Britain.

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Food Uses

• Beechnuts have been eaten by human beings in times of famine and shortage. As a child I loved to go gathering them and enjoyed eating them raw. It takes a long time however, to gather a quantity that would be useful to make a real contribution to a human diet and it is also very time-consuming to peel the hard shiny skin of the little nutlets.
  Much as we enjoyed collecting and eating the Beechmast as children, its taste may not be sufficiently enticing to inspire our modern palates, because we are so spoiled these days with a wealth of exotic foods. Nevertheless I would still rate them delicious when they are roasted and slightly salted.

• Young Beech leaves can be eaten in the spring as a useful addition to more traditional salad vegetables.

• In France, the roasted nutlets have been used at times to make a coffee substitute.

• Beech nuts can yield 17 - 20% vegetable oil, which was used in East European countries for cooking, as a salad dressing and as a butter substitute. It has also been used as an oil for burning, for example in lamps.
  In the same way, that British children were given time off school, during the war, to collect rosehips from the hedgerows as an important source of vitamin C, German children were given special holidays during the two world wars to collect the Beechmast as an important source of domestic oil.
  The mast, still in their shiny shells, was pulped in an oil mill and then pressed. Ripe mast, collected before it has dried out too much, will yield about 3 fluid ounces of oil per lbs of weight. At home this process can be imitated by using an old-fashioned mincing machine or a good quality blender. The pulp is put into a muslin bag and pressed under a heavy weight (or in a proper press) to extract the oil. Store the oil in airtight containers in a cool place. It is rich in fats and proteins and has a good keeping quality. Mrs. Grieve says that the remaining pulp can be used as animal food, although the Hamlyn Guide to Edible & Medicinal Plants of Britain and Northern Europe warns that the residue should not be eaten, because it is poisonous. It would be nice to hear from anyone, who can shed more light on this contradiction.

• For centuries, pigs and also often poultry, were turned out into the Beech forest in the autumn to get fat on the seeds before they were slaughtered as winter food. In English counties such as Buckinghamshire, commoners had the right to fatten a certain number of pigs in the local forest. The taste of the pork grown this way, was said to have a specially delicate flavour. The county of Buckinghamshire derived its name from the formerly famous forests of Beech growing there, the old (Anglo-Saxon) name of the tree, as well as the Beechmast being 'buck'.
  Deer not only eat the mast, but will also eat the leaves (which make also good forage for domesticated animals in times of shortage). Pheasants, especially reared for 'the shoot', were also often fattened on Beechmast.

• Richard Mabey gives a good recipe for making a potent liqueur from the leaves in his book "Food for free": "This probably originated in the Chilterns, where large plantations  of beech were put down in the eighteenth century to service the chair-making trade. Pack an earthenware or glass jar about nine tenth full of young, clean leaves. Pour gin into the jar, pressing the leaves down all the time, until they are just covered. Leave to steep for about a fortnight. Then strain off the gin, which will by now have caught the brilliant green of the leaves. To every pint of gin add about three-quarters of a pound of sugar (more if you like your liqueurs very syrupy) dissolved in half a pint of boiling water, and a dash of brandy. Mix well and bottle as soon as cold. The result is a thickish, sweet spirit, mild and slightly oily to taste, like sake, but devastating in its effects!"

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