Notable trees

 Fagus sylvatica

These stunning large purple trees (and their green siblings) with their graceful foliage and smooth silvery bark dignify a number of parks and private gardens in Cambridge. The one shown is a protected tree on a Bowen Street property. The beech belongs to the ‘royal family’ of European broadleaf trees; the family includes oaks and sweet chestnuts, all linked by the form of their fruit. It used to be said, ‘the oak for a king and the beech for a queen’.

There are wonderful beech forests in the chalky Chiltern Hills in England, but the species is thought to grow to perfection in Normandy, France. In forests near Rouen the trees lose all their lower branches and cast a deep shade, their bare trunks soaring to 100 feet beneath a dense green canopy. One writer imagines that they may have been the inspiration for the magnificent Norman cathedrals, both in sight and sound, for an old beech wood has the longest echo of any woodland.

Beeches have an ancient history. When copper beeches turned up in the wild they were once rumoured to be a sign of an ‘unnatural crime’ after which the ‘blood refused to lie down.’ Less fancifully, beeches have been used from ancient times to make furniture, kitchen utensils, clogs, fine carved toys and printing blocks for woodcut illustrations. The wood is easy to work for turning, carving and steam bending, and with its fine grain gives a nice finish. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries it was used in the production of decorative mouldings for furniture and picture frames, and more recently for hard-wearing domestic flooring and the finishing layer of laminates.