The English word book may grow from the beech tree
Old English boc, German Buche and Swedish bok all meant both beech and book, a link often explained by early runic tablets carved from beech wood. The tree's Latin name, fagus, even featured in debates over where the first Indo-European speakers lived. Its family history runs back over 80 million years.
Beeches, genus Fagus, are deciduous trees of the family Fagaceae, native to temperate and subtropical Eurasia and North America. Current classification recognises 14 species in two subgenera that split between 32.1 and 33.4 million years ago. One subgenus, Englerianae, grows only in East Asia and tends to have low branches, several main trunks and yellowish bark. The better-known subgenus Fagus has tall, stout trunks with smooth silver-grey bark and ranges across Europe, Asia and eastern North America.
Fagus is the earliest branch on the family tree that includes oaks and chestnuts. The oldest pollen attributable to the beech lineage, from Wyoming, is 81 to 82 million years old. Early modern beeches were probably present in the Paleocene of western Greenland and then spread across high northern latitudes, with a burst of diversity in the Miocene of northeastern Asia. Today's species bear the marks of repeated hybridisation and gene exchange.
The trees bear male and female flowers on the same plant. Wind carries pollen from male catkins, and the fruit is a three-sided nut, two to a spiny husk that splits open. Leaves have straight parallel side veins, each ending in a small tooth. Beech wants deep, well-drained, neutral or slightly acidic soil and, with shallow roots, suffers in drought, though it tolerates wind, cold and shade.
The European beech, Fagus sylvatica, is the species most often planted and provides timber for furniture, flooring, plywood and construction, as well as excellent firewood. It also flavours food and drink. Washed beech slats line some beer fermentation tanks, beech fires dry the malt for certain German smoked beers, and beech smoke cures Westphalian ham, andouille sausage and some cheeses. The linguistic link to book is traditional rather than certain, but it has long stuck.
Source: Beech
