CLASS XXI. ORDER VII. | FAGUS. 1213 
angled nut, three celled, two of which are abortive, one or two 
seeded, invested with the enlarged involucre—Name Qe«yos, in 
Greek; from Qeyw, to eat; in allusion to the fruit having been 
eaten as food. 
1. F. sylvatica, Linn. (Fig. 1465.) Common Beech. Leaves ovate, 
smooth, obsoletely toothed, their margins ciliated. 
English Botany, t. 1846.—English Flora, vol. iv. p. 152.—Hooker, 
British Flora, ed, 4. vol. i. p. 848.—Lindley, Synopsis, p. 239. 
A handsome spreading tree, with smooth bark. Leaves ovate, 
about two inches long, smooth, dark, shining, green above, paler 
beneath, the margins somewhat toothed or waved, and when young 
copiously ciliated with fine hairs and downy veins, petioles rather 
short, channeled, downy. arren flowers on long slender silky 
pendulous peduncles, collected into a terminal globose head. WSta- 
mens about eight, from the base of a six-cleft bell-shaped perianth, 
the filaments slender, and anthers oblong, yellow, two celled. SLertile 
catkins.on stout erect downy stalks. Involucre downy and prickly, 
investing the four or five lobed perianth. Stigmas three, spreading, 
downy. Nuts two or three, acutely triangular. 
Habitat.—Woods, especially in the South of England; scarcely 
wild in Scotland. 
Tree ; flowering in April and May. 
The Beech is one of our most handsome trees to stand alone in 
lawns or in parks, especially the purple leaved variety. When pro- 
perly trained and cut, it forms one of the best high hedges, and has 
the advantage when thus cultivated of keeping on its leaves all 
winter. The bark is remarkably thin, but tough, and taken off in 
large sheets it is used for making baskets, band boxes, &c. The wood 
is close grained, but brittle, and not of long duration ; it is chiefly 
used by joiners, and for some kinds of millwright’s work. It is also 
much used by turnersfor making wooden vessels, bowls, tool handles, 
&e.; and Virgil, in his Third Pastoral, makes Menalas to bet with 
Dametas, what he appears to value, aud says— 
“ Two bowls 1 have well turn’d of beechen wood ; 
Both by divine Aleimedon were made ; 
To neither of them yet the lip is laid. 
The lids are ivy; grapes in clusters lurk 
Beneath the carving of the curious work, 
Two figures on the sides emboss’d appear— 
Conon, and what's his name, who made the sphere, 
And shew’d the seasons of the sliding year, 
Instructed in his trade the lab’ring swain, 
And when to reap, and when to sow the grain,” 
The nuts abound in a thick kind of oil, which is said to be ex- 
pressed and used as butter by the poor people of Silesia. It is one of 
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