Beech

Culpeper judged beech leaves cooling and binding, laid on hot swellings or boiled into a poultice or an ointment in season. In magic the leaves are placed on a Samhain altar in honour of the ancestors, and carried, like the wood, to strengthen creativity.

Beechnuts are small and three-sided, two to a woody, prickly husk. People have eaten them, in times of famine according to Grieve, and they were once ground into flour after soaking had drawn out the tannins. In England they were thought to give wisdom and were kept as amulets; a cluster is offered when seeking abundance, and a few are eaten to sharpen second sight.

Fully ripe beechmast holds seventeen to twenty per cent oil, of the kind that does not dry, and Grieve names this oil as the part of the tree used. It was pressed in nineteenth-century England for cooking and lamps, is used on the Continent for cooking and burning, and in Silesia stood in for butter; the pressed cake fed cattle. Beechnut oil is still sold.

Beech wood is fine and short in the grain and easy to work, finish and glue, and goes into furniture, parquet flooring, mallets, bowls and turned goods; it also ranks among the best firewoods. Magically, a stick carved with a wish is buried and left in the ground, a twig placed where it is plainly seen at home is said to promote stability, and the wood is carried to strengthen creativity.