[Illustration: Flowers and Fruit of Beech.
_a._ Male flowers. _b._ Female flowers in cupule. _c._ Ovary and stigmas removed from cupule. _d._ Section of ovary, showing the three cells. _e._ Ripe cupule open, showing nuts.]
It is distinctly an acquisition to our woods and plantations, its long, toothed, shining leaves being fine both in shape and colour. Its male flowers are produced in long, yellow catkins, consisting of a great number of six-parted perianths; from these depend from ten to fifteen stamens, which discharge great quantities of pollen. The female flowers are borne in threes within an involucre (_cupule_), and each has its perianth adhering to the ovary; there are from five to eight cells in the ovary, and a similar number of stigmas, but, as a rule, only one cell matures one of its two ovules.
The name is said to be derived from _Castanum_, the name of a town in Thessaly whence the Romans first obtained the fruit.
First and foremost in any list of British trees should come the Oak, in utter disregard of all botanical classification, for not only was our supremacy of the sea and our existence as a nation gained by aid of our oaken walls, but a grand old Oak is finely typical of British solidity, strength and endurance. Fifteen years may be regarded as the average age at which the oak first produces its fruit, the acorn, and it continues to ripen its annual crop for centuries. Dryden has certainly not exaggerated in his lines that tell how--
“The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees, Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees; Three centuries he grows, and three he stays, Supreme in state, and in three more decays.”
According to the records and traditions relating to many hollow ruins of enormous girth still living at their circumference though long since dead at heart, Dryden’s nine-century tree is only middle-aged. Well-nigh every district in this country, not too high above sea-level, can show its monster Oak; but it is where the soil is close and heavy that it is seen at its best. There is no doubt about the Oak being a true native. Some of our Oak-forests are older than history: such was the forest of the Weald--Anderides-leag--in which the aboriginal Britons so long withstood the attempts of Romans and English to conquer them, and which at a much later date supplied alike much iron from its quarries and the oak charcoal wherewith to smelt it; and of which to-day the pedestrian-tourist from London to the South Coast will cross many considerable fragments. How widely it was grown is evident from the vast number of place-names of which it forms part, such as Okham, Ockshott, Ockley, Acton, Acworth, Acrington, Okehampton, Oxted, etc.