Within the same visual frame as yesterday’s Horse Chestnut stands an impressive Hornbeam, 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑙𝑢𝑠. The leaves are just beginning to break, a russety green, almost transparent haze, the catkins ready to burst, swaying in the breeze.
Its name points to its defining characteristic, at least from the human perspective. “Horn” for hardness, “beam” from the same linguistic roots as boom and baum, meaning tree. We still hear it in the beams of timber used in construction.
It was the wood of mill cogs, mallets and yokes, valued for endurance and resistance to pressure.
It coppices well. For centuries it was cut for firewood and charcoal, feeding small-scale forest industries such as iron smelting. In the Forest these sites abound, marked on Stevens’ early 20th century maps as Ancien établissement sidérurgique, the traces of bloomery furnaces.
The regrowth returns dense and strong, the tree renewing itself after each cut.
So what we see here, left to stand and reach its full form, is something worth noting. And respecting.