THE BEECH 109 
the landscape. Then it was, in early summer, 
Pelleas 
“Riding at noon 
Across the forest call’ of Dean, 
saw 
Near ‘Win & a noua of siete loping side, 
Whereon a hundred stately beeches grew, 
And here and there great hollies under them. 
But for a mile all round was open space, 
And fern and heath: and 3 
It seem’d to Pelleas that the — without 
Burnt as a living fire of emeralds, 
So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it. 
Then o'er it crost the dimness of a cloud 
Floating . . . .” 
The Beech generally flowers in May; but neither 
its long-stalked globular clusters of male flowers 
nor its smaller assemblages of female ones, are con- 
spicuous among the foliage. The male catkins hang 
from the axils of the lower leaves on the shoot, 
whilst the female inflorescences, each consisting of 
two or three flowers invested by a single “ cupule,” 
rise erect from those of the leaves nearer the grow- 
ing end of the shoot. When the four-sided “ cupule ” 
of rigid bracts, covered with recurved hooks and 
enclosing two or three triangular fruits of a rich 
chestnut colour, grows to a larger size and turns 
brown, it not only becomes conspicuous, but causes 
a greater litter on the lawn on which the tree may 
chance to stand. 
The closely matted roots and the dense shade 
rather perhaps than any poisonous exhalations, or 
even than mere drip. render the Beech generally 
fatal to grass, and injurious even to evergreens 
