3 April: Beech trees

Today is the Day of the Beech Tree in the French Revolutionary Calendar. Here are 10 things you might not know about beech trees.

1. The Latin name for the common beech is Fagus sylvatica.
2. They can grow to over 40m/80 feet in height and live for up to 400 years.
3. In Celtic mythology, Fagus was the god of Beech trees. Beech is, however, associated with femininity and is considered to be the queen of British trees (the Oak is the king).
4. Some beech trees have Purple leaves rather than Green ones. While they are usually bred to be that way for ornamental reasons, the colour variation has been around for centuries and no-one knows why it happens – possibly a mutation. Some beech trees have one purple branch while the rest of the tree remains green.
5. Scientists don't know, either, why some beech trees have rippled bark. One theory is that the tree suffered some kind of stress, like a lack of Water, as a young tree. Mature beeches with rippled bark are perfectly healthy and stable, however.
6. Some beech trees don't completely shed their leaves in winter and have dead Brown leaves still hanging from the branches. Some other species of tree do the same thing and there's a name for it – marcescence. Theories as to why this happens include that, if the leaves are shed at the end of winter, they provide much needed nutrients for the new growth in spring, or that they retain more Snow, providing water for the tree when the snow melts in spring. The trees which keep their leaves through the winter are usually sexually immature trees which don't flower yet. A beech tree may not become sexually mature until it's about 40 years old.
7. In olden times, beech nuts were fed to Pigs to fatten them up.
8. Beech leaves used to be boiled and made into a poultice to relieve swelling.
9. The trees lining the King's Road in Game of Thrones are beech trees. In real life this road is called the Dark Hedges and is in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The trees are over 240 years old.
10. Another famous beech tree is a grafting together of three saplings to make a letter N. These trees are now 100 years old and were voted Britain's Tree of the Year in 2018. The story behind it? A young man called Vic Stead grafted the saplings together to make the initial of his sweetheart, later wife, Nellie.

More Trees

Alder 

Ash 

Birch

Hawthorn

Holly

Horse chestnut

Oak Tree

Rowan

Willow

Yew tree

My Books 

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The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny.