Why beeches are better than other trees in the woods

In his book of proverbs, Blake writes, ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.’ That is true enough but it is not my tree-proverb, which runs, ‘An artist sees trees he can paint.’ When I look at trees, my eyes search instinctively for paintable ones, whose trunk and branches, leaves and swagger — for every worthwhile tree has pride of ancestry and wishes to cut a bella figura — I can get down on my paper and make lovable. Trees whose portraits I can paint. Trees are the nearest things in vegetable nature to human beings, with parents and offspring and lineage and long lifespans, whose shape and appearance — and health — are influenced by heredity and accident, place and quality of nourishment. Trees have faces and characters, even morals of a rough-and-ready, unscrupulous kind. They are often immigrants, from a few centuries back, who cunningly contrive to look very English, like beeches. These came here from south-east Europe not all that long ago, and are now real jingoes.

Indeed, beeches are my favourite trees. Like the English, they welcome sun but not too much of it. Like the English, again, they become attached to place and sink deep and complex roots to cling on to their homes, despite their long and successful history of emigration throughout the world (they are first-class globalisers and do not care tuppence for environmentalists — Greens, Friends of the Earth and other sentimental and ill-informed busybodies).

Here is how beeches get on in the world. They need sunlight. They can hardly breathe without light, and unless they breathe they do not get from the air the carbon which is their chief food. Sunlight is absorbed by the green colouring material in their leaves and turned into heat, supplying energy to the living tissue, and helping it to draw up any minerals it needs from the soil.