ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information on the uses, folk medicine, chemistry, germplasm, distribution, ecology, cultivation, harvesting, yields, energy, and biotic factors of European Beech. The nuts are sweet and edible when roasted. Raw nuts are poisonous, probably due to the presence of a saponin. Roasted nuts can be used as a substitute for coffee. Oil expressed from nuts is used for cooking, illumination, and manufacture of soap. Trees furnish excellent timber. Wood is heavy, hard, straight-grained, close textured, durable, easy to split, strong, resistant to abrasion, and used for flooring, cooperage, furniture, turnery, utensils, wagons, agricultural implements, wooden shoes, spoons, plates, railroad ties, excelsior, wood pulp, and is an excellent fuel. Trees deciduous, long-lived, up to 30 m tall, round-topped; trunk smooth, gray; buds slender, fusiform, acute, reddish-brown; branches smooth. In Norway and Sweden, boiled beechwood sawdust is baked and then mixed with flour to form the material for bread.
