Least of all the nuts good to eat that grow in our mixed woods is the
fruit of the grey-trunked beeches. In nutting time the beech tree’s crown
of green is almost as clean and bright as in midsummer. The silky leaves
are little torn by the wind. They turn to a beautiful pale yellow, and
become thin and papery as the green pulp is drawn back into the twigs.
Few people see the spiny green burs on the ends of side twigs in summer,
even though the crop of nuts be heavy. In the autumn the brown spiny
husks open. Their four divisions flare outward, and two triangular brown
nuts are released. Almost unnoticed they drop on the ground under the
tree. They are so little that the wind helps to scatter them in the woods
around. The shifting leaf carpet sifts them through, and we shall have to
hunt for them, even under the parent trees.
I need not tell any boy or girl how good and sweet these beech nuts are,
and how well they repay the trouble of getting the kernels out of the
thin, triangular shells. Yet people gather them less frequently than they
do chestnuts, because it is slow work, and there is more accomplished
under trees whose nuts are larger.
The early settlers fattened their pigs in autumn by turning them into the
woods. Beech trees made the best possible pasture for this purpose. The
flavour of beech nut bacon is exceptionally delicate, and has an extra
high market value. Squirrels and all of the smaller furry-coats take the
time and trouble to gather and hoard quantities of beech nuts among their
winter stores.
Fortunate for the beech tree, its nuts will grow even in the shade. We
shall find a fruiting beech tree surrounded by its children—saplings of
all ages, coming up from seeds of various sowings.
By scratching carefully among the dead leaves in spring, we shall find,
among the gaping burs, the young trees at the very beginning of their
lives. The nuts have slipped down into the damp leaf mould, and the
melting of snow, and the warm spring air have started them growing. The
triangular shell clings to the top of the stem, while the root is getting
a foothold. A pair of broad seed leaves, totally unlike the leaves of the
beech tree, unfold. The spreading of these seed leaves soon splits the
walls of the nut-shell helmet.
Little beech trees at this age are very weak and helpless, but patient
and struggling. Their pale leaves turn green as the root goes deeper
down, and draws food from the soil. A shoot bearing true beech leaves
rises from the tip, between the seed leaves. The stem straightens, and
grows tall, the seed leaves wither, and, unless it has bad luck, or some
accident befalls it, the little tree is a long, leafy whip by the end of
the season, and under each green leaf is a long bird’s-claw beech bud,
just like those on the parent trees. In these buds are leafy shoots which
will be side branches during the following summer.
Beech nuts are still one of the main foods of many wild animals. In the
earlier days they had much greater importance, for nuts were one of the
natural foods upon which the human race subsisted before the days when
men became civilised. They depended upon foods which Nature provided, and
ate them without cooking. Acorns served the same important purpose.
We cannot go back to the days when men lived in caves, and dressed in the
skins of wild animals, and lived upon foods like nuts and berries, and
the flesh of wild beasts. But in camping out we return as closely as
possible to the simple life of these wild ancestors of ours. It is good
to know what foods the forest offers to hungry men and beasts. Some day
we may be lost in the woods. We may come to an oak tree, and attempt to
eat its acorns, but find them bitter. It is well to know that the oaks
with finger-pointed leaves bear acorns that are sweet and good. It is
only the oaks with spiny-lobed leaves whose acorns are bitter and unfit
for food. Beech trees offer no food to a hungry person, unless he knows
how little the nuts are, and how they hide by slipping under the leaves
when they fall. To know trees is delightful at any time, and in any
place. To know them when one is lost in a forest is often the means of
saving one’s life. The forest still feeds the hungry, but only those who
know the trees are able to find these stores of food when they need them.