- Fagus sylvatica
- Europe
Genus
Fagus is the Latin name for the beech. The most beautiful and, together with the oak, the most important tree of the deciduous forest; up to 400 years old. The genus comprises ten species.
Deciduous, large, stately, over 40 meters high and wide forest, park, garden and landscape tree with great design and ecological qualities.
The tall, smooth, silver-grey trunks with mighty strong branches support the green canopy. In bionics, it is "the model of the Gothic cathedral". Leaves: whole-margined, ovate-pointed, four to ten centimetres long, smooth, light green, yellow-brown autumn coloration, cling to the shoot for a long time until spring.
The Celts carved oracle signs/runes into beech wood. In China, the beech is immortalized in the oracle wisdom "Ching". St. Hildegard von Bingen used beech wood as a remedy for cramps, fever and jaundice, and beech ash was used to treat ulcers and wounds in humans and animals.
In the vernacular, the saying arose during thunderstorms: "You should avoid oaks, flee from spruces, avoid willows too, but seek out beeches."
Information on the species
The word sylvatica is Latin and means belonging to the forest or forest-dwelling. The name red beech refers to the reddish wood.
Flowers: monoecious, male flowers stalked in round clusters; female flowers in twos or threes on the same tree, pistils erect with a spiny fruit cup
Fruits: triangular, brown hard shells in pairs in a spiny, upright fruit cup with well-known oily seeds, the "beechnuts". They provide valuable edible oil
Wood use: first-class firewood and timber of all kinds, for carpentry and joinery, furniture, parquet, construction timber for interiors, chemical industry, cellulose
Characteristics: Shade tree species, therefore sensitive to heat, drought, waterlogging, air and soil pollution and especially soil compaction (death of the soil life living in symbiosis with the beech and then of the tree), the turf is also the "shroud of the tree" in the eaves area, sunburn when the trunks are exposed